Disclaimer: If you are someone who believes it is not healthy to talk about past relationships for what you learned and grew from, you might wanna start with my podcast: “Embracing the Past, Verbalizing the Present” first. Otherwise, carry on.
The last relationship I had that was truly connected mind body and sex, was during the pandemic. I have to say I really enjoyed the time we took to get to know one another. We would spend hours on facetime and the phone talking or just in each other’s presence. It was like I was in her home and her in mine. I understand this was an extenuating circumstance, but it showed me something else… By the time we met, the sex and physical touch was beyond amazing; it was purposeful.
It was like listening to my podcast: “My First time, let’s be awkward together.” without the awkward, but with an intense sense of connection and youthful, playful exploration.
We started with me standing at my car, both of us masked, and she came over from her apartment where we embraced in both of our first hugs with another human in a long time, let alone someone we had a connection and interest in. We just stayed there for an abnormally long, if anyone was watching, which a woman behind us in their car was, it was an awkward amount of time, exploring what the other felt like under the puffy winter jackets. We then moved on to holding hands on a walk, even taking the “let’s go inside” slow and steady until both of us had acclimated to real life with one another. Only being able to see each other’s eyes above the masks was inquisitive, yearning, and curious about the other person who we had spent so much time with, but had never actually “spent time with”. The hands started to warm us up our bodies and firing all the synapses in our minds.. It was deep. It was real. It was tear filled. What is sexier than lubing the moment with tears!
So we finally made our way back to her place and entered, together, each other’s personal space, which as you know during the pandemic, was a big deal. We sat there kinda laughing awkwardly for a little but mostly I played with her cat and she made us coffee and we were quite comfortable. Our masks were down, we shared the air, and there was no turning back. And then this thing we talked about for weeks happened. She said “I want to just lay on you, and feel you”. No awkwardness at all. This moment when we were first inside each other’s homes and without hesitation or even delay, taking off our shirts bare and naked and exposed to each other. I laid on her bed and came up and she laid on me. She wrapped her arms around my sides holding me tighter than ever. The feeling of us touching and holding one another after all those weeks of seeing each other through a screen(clothed and naked), hearing each other’s voices, but never touching, smelling, or feeling the warmth, was enough to just put us both into a child-like slumber. We laid there for hours, feeling each other’s breath on each other’s necks, kissing here and there. No fear, no jitters, no worry of a stumble or embarrassment: just intent. Potent intent… as our hearts swelled with all the things we learned about one another that made that moment both scary, and literally naked, not because of worry, fear, nerves, or first date tribulations, but because of how comforting it was on first meet and what that meant to how much closer we were to actual love.
And sure we muddled our way through sex the first time, but this moment transcended sex by a billion. To explore one another. To lay there on top of each other naked, warm bodies touching, falling asleep in a bear hug. It was magical.
Mind you I am not oblivious to a lot of this having to do with us being separated from human touch and wanting to just share the simple things like: air, space, and human touch with each other, however, we mustn’t overlook the significant role emotional attachment played in enhancing the physical experience, making it more of a cherry on top versus the starved diet of splurging on a cheat day.
I suppose this was so transcending in terms of previous relationships that I, now back out in the world of dating, have forgotten the “old ways”. If I am being honest, I don’t want to go back, I want to do it this way over and over. It increased the pleasure I got from that first meet / encounter. It made the intimacy natural and heightened. Every touch had a meaning versus being a question. Every kiss was a breath out, not holding in, yet the anticipation was still present. We could fall asleep in each other’s arms because the flood of information we shared over those weeks was now connected to the physical, not because it was shutting down.
I still full heartedly believe that people have not taken the time to heal from the PTSD of the Pandemic. They have not taken the time to see the cracks that were revealed and quite ugly all around us, come to terms with them, and adjust their own life based on them. This is prevalent in dating more than anything else. People are hurting. People are not emotionally available. People are not sure how to use online dating anymore, not that they were before, but now it feels like a fear thatt accepting it is similar to a conservative view on accepting “remote work” being a reminder of the Pandemic versus just a different way of doing things, and possibly, if everyone accepts it, a better one.
Part of me misses this in the now post pandemic dating.
Post pandemic there is a weird “rush” to see someone in person because of “lost time”. If we hold to the idea of having PTSD from the pandemic, it feels like people are trying to make up for the lost time in all the worst ways. Pre-pandemic wasn’t much better; there was so much sexting and other “what should have been intimate shares” we had no right really sharing so soon, engaging with each other in a foreign way while still not knowing one another. Now we are combining two bad habits into one, pre and post. Mind you, I believe two people should meet quickly once a connection has been established, as there are things a text, phone call, and video chat cannot do. However, I do not think it should be rushed even after the first date. This also assumes people are giving a possible partner the chance to share, interact, and be. Another pandemic anomaly. Many people only engaged with one person at a time due to fear of the virus spreading/the idea of podding with another and also not having the mindspace to multi-date.
Don’t get me wrong, I want sex. I want human touch. I want connection more than anything. I am emotionally, physically, and financially available. When I meet someone both mentally and physically attractive I get extremely excited. I do feel like this is the logical next step in my life, to share it with another. But I have noticed that I want less to get them into bed, but get them out into the world. I want to experience them in different situations, around different people, and at the end of night if all we did was kiss I’m completely content. The sex for me was learning about their body language, seeing them laugh, them making me laugh and watching how they interact with the world around them, with me in it. Laughter is like my new viagra. Hard to explain. Do they react with the conversations I am having, do they withdraw, do they make no impact?
But we are getting this crazy pre and post pandemic combo that supersedes that breadth of getting to know one another for one reason or another and it feels… less. It doesn’t feel as fulfilling to me. Call me a little stuck in the past, but I preferred the anticipation while we got to know one another and growing the connection approach versus the pre and post pandemic ones. So much so that I now often forget to engage in the “sexual quips” prior to meeting or feeling comfortable mentally with someone to even do so. Converting a lot of my old writing into podcasts I’ve read things like “the obligatory sexts prior to meeting” and I realized I completely forgot about that way of interaction. I don’t even consider them. I think of them as the equivalent of sending a nonconsensual dick pic. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten older or maybe I truly am trying to replicate that feeling of comfort when I met my ex after months of FaceTimes and sharing due to a lockdown. Either way I feel a little lost. I feel a little unsure, both how to do it, if I want to do it, and wondering if without those “sexual quips” the other person will think I am not interested in them beyond friends. I feel a little lost on where to engage more in a sexually playful manner in order to spark a spark versus getting to know the mind of the other person to make the spark electric. There is no mental connection to help guide these natural feelings if we don’t take the time to form it. I wonder to myself if this is affecting the “attraction” or do they think I am just not attracted to them, “He didn’t send me a dick pic on date 3, this must not be working”. It’s this catch 22 where I want to build something with them so when we embrace in the sexual aspect of a relationship it will mean something, it will feel something, it will arouse me not just below but in my mind above. I’m also trying to balance not ignoring the “attraction” aspect of a relationship, and making sure they know it exists. Trust me if we are at this point, it exists!
I wonder if this can be achieved now that we are post the pandemic lock down moment. If this was just a case of happenstance. If people even want to engage in this type of intimacy. I will say, it feels like I have forgotten how to be intimate with someone who hasn’t given me a mental intimacy to base it off. Sure, I want to kiss you if you are attractive. Sure I want to see a cute selfie of you in your undies. Sure I want to hear what you want to do to me… and I to you, but I first want to know your dreams(literally the moment you wake up in a text, a voice message, or a call), your aspirations, your likes, dislikes, but more importantly, I want to experience your day to day. I want to hear the small inconsequential things that show me inside your inner workings. What memes do you send? How was your day? “Omg KAREN SAID WHAT at the office?!” I hate gossip but, boy oh boy do I love to fuel the fire of a good sesh. These little bits help me to paint the picture and draw a map to the metaphorical secret one handed unclasping of your bra..
I suppose I can tap into my pubescent self if I want and skip the formalities, I just find these formalities bring out my playful side more. Not to mention, my mind is fully attached to my ability to get an erection as man, so that connection helps the moment not go limp.
I have always been more self sustained in my sexual needs, especially since many of them have been overshadowed by the let down of the work I have done to please someone vs the work they have done, so to make that connection first, really helps to make it so more elevated, easier to say in the moment, this is what I like, this is what I don’t like. I don’t wanna try some kink with a stranger I don’t trust. I mean don’t get me wrong, the attraction has to be there, but there is growth in that, and the conversations and getting to know someone based on even a smaller attraction can build into a much larger attraction. This elevates any intimacy if given the time to properly breath. Maybe I am just in the mood for romance first at this moment in time. To be honest I think I want more physical touch on the surface than the inside right now, like that moment where my ex laid skin on skin and we slept in each other’s arms, because that was more intimate than anything sexual in that moment. Even holding hands leading up to it, brought me comfort and built trust. I want to find the balance of building that trust over time, while still making sure my possible partner knows, if I am holding your hand, I most likely want to get naked with you, just maybe not today.
I think I finally get the meaning behind “buy me dinner first”. Only took 40 years.
And like I said then, those two things are no different in real life vs online. For all of you who think online dating is inorganic, there is a massive amount of projection happening to cause it to be that way. This begins with the WHY you signed up for online dating in the first place. The most common “wrong reasons to join online dating” I’ve run across are, “ I just got out of a relationship, but didn’t heal yet”, “I am not here for dating but looking for an ego boost/more instagram followers”, “I feel I am not worth it” and as you get older “I just got divorced”. There are many other reasons, but these are the top ones I’ve run into.
So one might say the consequences of online dating are of human design and nature. Not of online dating itself. Mind you, there are also the predatory practices these apps use, such as monetizing our futures and pay gating “who likes you” to make you pay for the dopamine, very similar to gamification gambling you see in games from microtransaction mobile games and the like.
End of the day the only inorganic thing is the amount of choice and ease of approach. In person you have to get up the nerve to say hello, online you hit enter and never look back(hoping the app doesn’t charge you to match). In real life you get to see the person immediately, with more depth perception and being able to compare them to yourself, a 3D version, and that attraction is what makes you want to say “hi” or go in for the approach, not their amazing ability for “sarcasm” or their “love of travel”.
So you don’t need to read their Bio, but you want to know it eventually!
Let’s step back for a moment and really look at this granularly. Some new things emerging in online dating which are contrary to how “dating” used to be are what truly blur the lines more between online and analog dating more and more: Many people think it is ‘creepy’ if you try to meet them in person too quickly. I myself, personally find FaceTime prior to meeting a necessity. It stops the “best foot forward, perfect moment” pressure. Not only that, it is a great way to build that first date becoming more engaging and less “jittery”. It is also a fantastic way to weed out those who misrepresent themselves, which I find to be extremely disconcerting, not because of the shallow reasons, but because any relationship foundation built off a lie, is not a good beginning. Even if it is a poor sense of self, this red flags that the other person has work to do without you.
So not only are there these unspoken, but highly enforced rules on how many txts you send to someone, or times you communicate prior to meeting, but now there are these added rules of when you can ask someone to meet without being “creepy”. These strange time gates on the organic nature of life, again, a consequence of societal design, are causing a strange inorganic nature to what should be us embracing technology to enhance that first meeting. A way for us to get to know each other in a safe environment at a deeper level before our first date, let alone first kiss. It presents a welcome boundary between our blood flow to our privates and more emphasis on what is in our minds. It gives us breadth to get to know one another beyond puppy dog love and grow a spark rather than electrocute one another with it. You can listen more about that in the podcast “The “Romantic Spark” is Burning Your Chances. But there is truly something amazing about having a physical boundary, through the likes of say a Facetime, between your new person and the ability to just fuck. Because if and when you do get there, from experience, I can tell you it is so much more amazing.
So let’s break it down even further and consider Analog dating. I meet you in person, establish a connection, maybe even grab a drink with you or walk in the park right then and there. At the end of the “date” if it went well, we are going to exchange numbers and guess what, it once again ends up ONLINE. No matter how you look at it, we are in an era of Online. Unless we plan to send snail mail to set up plans, everything we do is online. We are exchanging numbers, instagrams, facebooks, or … snapchat.. Ughh.
So here we are, Analog dating but then converting to “online dating” without even realizing it. And all the above Online Dating societal blockages repeat. We are subject to blocking one another, ghosting, breadcrumbing, or whatever trend in online dating is, well, trending. We text too much perhaps, we get comfortable in the virtual “is typing” bubbles, and the “second date limbo” occurs, another Podcast of mine .
I may sound cynical, but I truly believe if two people embrace online dating, the inorganic nature of it becomes organic, because after all, we are in the age of Online. Once you embrace this, you can truly be your true selves to find the truth in dating with another person. Be it “this isn’t going to work but thank you for the Video chat” or “Would you like to go out again friday at 7?” It allows us to interact with one another organically, as we blur the lines of the “inorganic and organic” more and more with our undoubtedly “connected” worlds both in life and dating. Maybe instead of everyone writing “love travel” as their interests on their profiles, which I am not saying you can’t love travel, maybe we should write, “loves doom scrolling to go to sleep, on their smartphone”, perhaps then, we will be closer to being truthful with ourselves and others, making the hypothetical “inorganic” the actuality that, being plugged in, is now organic.
Navigating the world of online dating feels like entering a realm where others are blissfully ignorant to the chaos, both in the apps and in the world around them. It’s as if some see life as a fluffy marshmallow cloud, while I encounter a parade of broken souls.
Starting to feel very alone. My recent in-person encounter exemplified this struggle – a person so haunted by past traumas, their attempt at kissing resembled a disconnected dance with a numb and lifeless partner. They physically forgot how to do it without realizing and a simple kiss was them with their tongue stuck out of their mouth. Stiff as a board. Lifeless. With me wondering what to do. I even asked “are you here? Where did you go”. I gave them a little pleasure unable to connect to this disconnected human for any pleasure myself and eyes that screamed trauma and I left bewildered, questioning why self-awareness seems elusive in this dating landscape. Why should I have to be the thing that helps someone heal. I don’t want to be the “savior” or stepping stone or hallway to the door that leads to their actual relationship. Trauma isn’t a badge. But it sure as hell seems to be used as one these days, mostly by those who haven’t actually healed. They did some work sure, but they stopped near the point of automated mechanism.
It took me much of the rest of the weekend to recover actually. From what should have been a lovely night out to play pool and get to know another person turned into me growing increasingly more curled up in a metaphorical corner of my mind, unable to escape the trauma they presented me (which I love sharing) but so much so fast, made me unable to digest. Left with a horrible sense of panic as I was unsure how to release it. I finally did in a missed connection and I am grateful for their ear.
I do feel bad for the person I spoke to prior, who A: looked nothing like their profile photos, and B: had to deal with me, who was obviously not in a good spot after this weekend and therefore used my sardonic and sarcastic nature to try to explain my bad day, to which I was given a mouthful of “but this is how you heal anxiety” aka buzz words a therapist would say. I feel bad, but there is a difference between reminding someone in a panic attack of tools they already have to help it, and just spewing random shit you read on the internet. Might as well just have said “just breath”. So needless to say, that added onto the weekend of shit and I felt bad for not being my best self for them even if they were a falsity right off the bat. “If someone doesn’t match their photos, it’s an immediate no. It’s not even an aesthetic thing or a weight or height or type thing it’s leading with a lie.” – My friend Emily
In my 40s, offering much more than a mere profile of my bald ass self feels hopeless at times.Sure looks aren’t everything but a profile with x amount of words and a society that doesn’t read doesn’t leave ya with much of a chance. I find myself longing for someone who’s put in the emotional work. The dating app journey feels like being this emotionless entity seeking connection amidst a sea of those fixated on the idea of a relationship rather than its substance.
And then when I meet those who are accepting of dick pics, abusive relationships, believe the world to be flat, take others lives and put them at risk because they are “tired of precaution”, or just plain don’t seem to have substance due to this over abundance of positivity that feels shallow due to it being all they offer, I wonder, will I be alone for the long haul?
I offer so much. I’ve lived so much life. And no I don’t see everything as happy and joyous but I put in the work to allow myself to share my life with another and realistically be a partnership. Technically we are all just navigating each other’s mine fields. If I do step on one(which is inevitable), I want them to let me know what it was and I will learn from it and employ empathy to make sure future steps are softer. I want someone who will tell me what they are thinking as a kindness not a chore.
See the thing about trauma is that when you no longer experience it you still get the hyper awareness of it. And mine was centered around trying to figure out if I would be hit as a child or if I would get mentally mind fucked. Remove that and I end up seeing every goddamn micro expression of the body and face and feel every breath and extra sound, smell every sensory around me intensely 24/7 which is why I appreciate someone’s openness to say what’s on their mind without me even having to ask as it gives my brain a breather. Allowing me more in the moment moments. But, instead I’m seeing this alternate reality to the thing being presented and screaming to get the hell out of there.
I just don’t know how to express it in a dating app that’s entire bottom line is reflected by keeping people using their apps not matching them.
And with that I double click it, and scroll to the next, thinking to myself, I’ll see it again later cause Instagram stores my likes, but guess what, I never do. So I spend less time properly absorbing what is in-front of me, and more time, scrolling to the next.
The average user spends less than 3 seconds per image on Instagram, that includes time to click like.
We are archiving the things we are seeing these days and putting them into meaningless “lists”, never to be seen again. Kinda like that time you shot the fireworks on your phone’s camera and later in the year were like:
“FUCK YEAH I AM SO GLAD I SHOT THESE FIREWORKS ON MY SHITTY ASS CAMERA WITH A HORRIBLE MIC, I AM WATCHING THIS AGAIN!”.
But if it wasn’t bad enough that we endlessly scroll through each “firework” of our social media lives now we create “Pods” and “Bots” to do the scrolling for us. We automate the scrolling and liking process because we want to grow our “influence” faster.
But what are you influencing when 99% of the instagram nobody is doing the exact same thing. You are converting a society that created Beethoven’s Symphony, put men in space, into the digital simulated “drones” that Elon Musk believes we are living in. And even if we are not in a simulation, powering our alter simulations lives, we have pretty much become so many steps disconnected from actually connecting with one another that the idea of others botting us as we bot them to grow our “influence” doesn’t seem to matter.
Why doesn’t anyone understand that the like or “Awesome!” comment on their photo means absolutely nothing if no one is actually there to mean it? Or to spend the time walking between photos or places or people and interating with them like you might in a museum, or intimate party, or exotic vacation. Without documenting it, just looking at it, seeing it. Soaking it in for more than the 3 seconds allocated for an archival process never to be looked at again.
Barney Bailey could sell you fire in water, but this is far worse and you all, myself included, bought in. Because we know, or we hope, that perhaps if I bot longer than subject 2917271 bots that I will grow .1% more followers and likes and “engagements” to be recognized for a brand deal that actually pays me for all this time I am spending.
Engagements.. Haha how do we even quantify this anymore. I comment on your photo, hoping you comment on my photo, hoping that will drive me into the algorithm of “seen posts” and someone else will comment on the photo, but they are commenting on the most popular photo in hopes that someone else will comment on their… DO YOU SEE THE ENDLESS FUCKING LOOP OF ABSOLUTE NOTHING?
We have created a system in which nothing, not a damn interaction, not the “color scheme” of your page, your content, your “engagement”, matters. Not even brands who endorse “influencers” understand this shit fully, and to be honest, if I were you and you have paid endorsements, ride it the fuck out hard until it eventually either implodes or our new currency in life becomes likes. Like cryptocurrency mining, but like and “engagement” mining. We are already putting enough energy and “effort” into these kinds of actions that we could most likely have randomly typed Shakespeare faster than the monkeys if the likes were random keystrokes.
But this is the world right now. Never seeing, only archiving, with no intent of looking back. Wondering why they feel empty, alone, and stuck without a sense of permanence in the world. We created this world.
We fuel this world.
Wake the fuck up and fight for your right to be human again and not an automated system.
We define how technology defines us, not the other way around. But if you keep clicking “like” in hopes for your “like” or because “well I will look at it later”, the cycle continues and those who benefit from it, will encourage you to continue feeding the system that makes them money.
We have more choices than we think when we decide what defines as in society, online, commercially. We have the power to stop using a product, stop putting money into things that hurt us or we dislike, and we have the power to change a lot, by smacking those in the wallet who would try to have only their own interests in mind to stop it from happening.
So let’s challenge ourselves in 2019 to be present more and utilize technology to make us better not… automated.
This is what I was told just recently after asking if I could call someone I swiped on from an online dating site. I thought, let’s see if we can hold a conversation before we meet so make sure we don’t waste time at an awkward dinner or coffee meeting. If anything I wonder why more people don’t want to do this! It is a great way to weed out the weirdos! But that aside, we talked for about 20 minutes as she got ready to go to a class and was running around her house getting dressed and seemed kinda stressed. No biggie, nothing big was being talked about, it was just a general, “Hello, I am real, you are real, nice to hear your voice with inflection!”
The next day I texted to see if they wanted to grab a coffee and I got the response above.
I sat there for a moment, kinda dumbfounded. Is this how quickly people expect to find romance? To feel the “connection” to another human being that is multi faceted? Someone you never met, never smelled, never looked into their eyes? Never shared physical space with?
I was talking to my trainer about it this morning and I said, it is kind of like if someone came in for a session, worked out hard, and at the end of the session looked in the mirror and told him, “Yeah, I don’t see any results, this isn’t working.”
What the fuck has happened to us as human beings? Are we that addicted to the dopamine of the instant “click”, the “excitement of new people that if we don’t have the nearly 1 in a million experience of “love at first sight” (yes I was on the pilot for that show), that knowing we can keep swiping until we get our fix for it, we can just toss away the idea of anything that remotely resembles “getting to know someone” and “learning to love them for who they are, what they believe in, how we get along, and in person interactions experiences we have together”?
Shit if you want fireworks that badly at the first meeting, if you have iMessage I can send them right away!
Now there is the one obvious answer to all of this which is that people are just not strong enough to tell you the truth as to why they are not interested in you. So they make up a reason that they feel is the least intrusive. But seriously, in this case it’s OK to tell the truth. It is OK to answer a text with an unpopular answer. It is OK to tell someone what is on your mind. It is OK to be uncomfortable doing it as well! (I have talked about how we really need to start “getting hurt” again) So stop with the “I didn’t feel a romantic click” lines after texting someone for 10 seconds and just say “I don’t think we are compatible for X reason”. 99/100 times it will give everyone closure. Mind you there are the crazies, but they don’t define the majority of us. So please, just be honest. Shit I have gone on a date where I told the person when I met them in person, “I am sorry you don’t look like your photos and I feel a bit deceived, so I am going to head out, but thank you for coming to meet me regardless. Good luck!”
But to me I think it is a deeper problem. An addiction to the feeling of “new romance” the addiction to the massive exposure to so many people and the excitement of puppy love, that what is happening is people are no longer aware of how to actually build a foundation for a relationship. How love comes in time. How you can grow your love based on experiences and interactions together. How love doesn’t always have a set path or reason. How it isn’t a rush to the finish but a step at a time, enjoying the moments you get to spend with another human and allow them into your life, and to share yours with them. The love that comes from truly “falling in love” not pretending we are legos and “clicking” it all together.
So again, I am taken aback by the way we as a society are assimilating to what these dating sites tell us to do. How we should feel. How we should interact. Taking out more and more of the personalizations and adding more emojis, quick responses, canned responses, and cheesy “List your fav color for match percentages”. These dating sites have a business model. And if you actually form a long lasting relationship, guess which site doesn’t get paid? Think about that for a second. Now take those extra seconds and give people a chance with the extra time. Don’t take excitement and enthusiasm as bad signs, but use them to grow. Stop swiping just for a minute, figure out if we can create some moments together, and inspire each other! Then let that go wherever it may go, even if it ends up not working. One must be open to conversation and not afraid of debate as if it is confrontation. Opening yourself up for rejection to see if you truly understand the complexities of another person.
Hardest part though is this all starts with you. So yes perhaps there was another reason that text was sent, but from my experience, it is no longer the logical answer, but the illogical endorphin rush needed to make the tedious task of swiping and telling your favorite color over and over entertaining and feeling worthwhile, but at the expense of true connections.
There is a big difference between “pissed off” and a rant made for myself with the intent of another reading it. I don’t know if I am just an old man now and my writing because I wrote it over the last decade is aging poorly, but people seem to think when I write I am angry… and in the day and age of overly enthusiastic yoga masters that live at the beach and other exotic locations, doing nothing but smiling, perhaps the Instagram generation would see anything with a strong opinion as angry.
Over inflection to allow for comedic relief and enjoyment from the reader is all over my work. Just like in real life, my use of sarcasm and sardonic humor. Not dissimilar to telling a fable over a fire. There is no angst or anger in my writing. I am usually laughing out loud during the writing sessions depending on the topic.
But on the other hand it doesn’t surprise me at all that it would be read differently specially in the social climate of 2018 – 2020 today. Where people have forgotten debate is OK. And it isn’t always yelling. And sometimes things are not black and white. I am someone who jokes and laughs at about everything. I have a tattoo that says “and go the fools among” on my arm for a reason. I prefer to see the world that way rather than just wallowing in self pity over the crap I cannot change.
Modern dating is fantastic if people knew how to use it properly. But alas, 98% of the population prefers to follow the road traveled to get to Point B from A. So finding someone who uses it in a unique way is often hard to find. And before you get upset that I am putting people into a bubble of generic, scroll through profiles, count the words: “sarcasm, travel, family, friends, and iPhone” Everyone is a fucking professional rock climber, with 1 million frequent flier miles, with stock in lulu lemon and sunsets.(even this sentence would sound jaded, so why don’t you read it like a stand up comedian going on a hilarious rant, because obviously I am awesome like that)
Tell me something I don’t know already, and I get interested. Tell me your day wasn’t “Good, thanks” or that more than “nothing much” is up and you have my attention. So while yes I do think bringing a flower to a date is quite nice, I do not believe we have to go back in time to get he most out of the world in front of us. But we do need to embrace things out of our comfort zone to allow these apps to work and integrate the benefits of traditional methods for a beautiful hybrid.
Tell me what conversation you can have on Tinder, OkCupid, or any dating app that is going to tell you more than an in person meeting?
If you have established the person is not a serial killer through sharing social media or other such mediums, why must there be some made up “online dating” etiquette to make everybody feel vindicated that they “followed the rules”.
Fuck your rules.
Your rules end up with a date with someone who you don’t like the smell of, has bad breath, a voice of a tiny rodent, and a horrible sense of self. And guess what? They just happened to be an amazing writer. Those twitter sized bite size faux texts on your dating app sure did save you time…
ONLINE DATING IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE AS SIMPLE AS:
“Finding the other person attractive”
“Seeing if there might be some similar likes/dislikes”
And that IS IT. And hey guess what… that is NO DIFFERENT THAN MEETING IN PUBLIC PLACES. For all of you who think online dating is inorganic, the only inorganic thing is the amount of choice and ease of approach. In person you have to get up the nerve to say hello, online you hit enter and never look back. In person you get to see the person, mind you with more depth perception and being able to compare them to yourself and see a 3D version of them, but the attraction is what makes you want to say hi, not their amazing ability for “sarcasm”. Shit an in person meet might not even get to number 2. It might just be getting the number and setting up a time to meet, AGAIN… IN PERSON…
You HAVE to meet, there are too many mitigating circumstances that go into dating and meeting someone for you to be able to make an educated decision or even know anything about the other person without it. But if you want to harp on the fact that X amount of messages were or weren’t sent, you want to go back to texting nothing of consequence, and making snap judgement without knowing a damn thing about the person, go ahead, but please for fucks sake stop swiping right on me.
Lately I have been wondering how much we hinder our actual ability to form meaningful relationships because of the internet. We have this sense of being connected all the time, yet we are further apart than ever as well. It is like being in a “comfortable” relationship, not for the happiness or love, but because it brings us consistency and doesn’t impose on our comfort zones. Tell you what, I would rather be single and lonely than together and unhappy. We do this with so much in life, jobs, living arrangements, relationships; grasping onto that safety blanket of our own insecurities and the technology has the potential to unlock so much more for us but we choose to hide behind it. We grasp onto whatever semblance of anonymity we feel it holds for us still. A picture from yesterday on instagram with 1000 likes doesn’t satiate us for more than a fleeting second. We need to open our eyes and enjoy the world around us, using the tech to enhance it, not as a passive blockade, sheltering ourselves from mystery, intrigue, and the unknown.
This bubble of tech we have created around us is not healthy. Not just the internet, but texts, emails, and any other forms of communication that require electricity(minus the infamous phone call which I truly miss with all my heart.)) I loved talking on the phone. It brought me happiness. Sure you can text and chat with people all day at the computer or on your phone, but you get no human inflection, voice, or warm fuzzy feelings when you see someone’s name pop up on your caller ID. Instead we get annoyed, and ask for features built into our phones to send automated texts to allow us to skip calls with courtesy. I still leave messages, and they are damn amusing, but when is the last time you did when you weren’t feeling playful? A voicemail account being setup these days is rare, and even rarer for us not to instinctually hang up immediately when we hear the start of an intro to it telling us to leave one. I remember when I was younger, not getting a phone call every day at least 3 or 4 times sent you into a spiral of depression, now I feel like the constant “connection” can do the exact same thing.
How are we to really connect with someone and fight for things we truly think are worthwhile when we are stuck in the digital void where we say enough to feel connected but never pull the trigger of connecting. And if we do meet someone it is like a job interview, with 10 others lined up afterwards on both ends, we want to be there but at the same time we find “in person” to be a waste of time. Then on top of it all we don’t give ourselves the disconnect needed to let each person we meet sink in. We are constantly missing opportunities to meet people because it is so “convenient” to stay in “limbo”, messaging just enough to stay on the radar but never actually making the effort to go beyond avoiding opening a text, forbid we let the other person know it was “read” before we are “ready”.
I mean you all know what I am talking about, who doesn’t open up Facebook messenger or texts and skim the first few words to avoid that “read” receipt. It is a cyber warfare against true connection and we are all the ones to blame. This goes beyond hunger games and just starves us of humanity and interpersonal connections we need.
We fight for minutes in the day so we can snap judge character and personalities, yet when we only pursue the “instant connection”. And from what I have seen these connections don’t last because they too are based on instant gratification. What if that person we had in queue didn’t have that instant connection due to mitigating circumstances? What if the “perfect first date” which doesn’t exist, was a flop, but the second one would have been truly mind blowing. I believe 100% that you can fall in love, and by that I mean letting time give you the full picture of a person in-front of you making you want more and more of the addictive drug.
I miss the days of talking for hours on the phone with someone I knew I couldn’t see but wanted to so badly. I miss not looking at read receipts and wondering if the other person would reply. I also miss delayed gratification.
I dunno, I enjoy what technology provides for us, but I find it to be a very lonely place where we literally are surrounded by people 24/7. I think there was something to be said about not having instant access to all the information at once, something that inspired us, made us better, and taught us the value of debate/conversation over facts.
So for me, it is going to be a conscious effort for less digital-shenanigans, and more “going on that first date”, second date, and hopefully third.
I thought really long about how to answer it… Love is hard to define let alone know the answer, if there is one.
I often find myself watching a lot of romantic comedies in hopes that one day the end of the movie will come with some sort of revelation or reveal as to what it actually is. Funny part is, I have, over the years, comes to enjoy the romantic comedies that leave the “answer” blank more than the ones that try to package in neatly in a box for the viewers. Sure love is about the ups and downs and laughs and crying you see in the films but when the film ends, the cameras stop rolling, those fictional characters carry on in their fictional world without an audience and regardless of it filming or not their lives are still in motion. And in that moment where we can’t see it, we can’t voyeuristically watch in hopes of the end all be all answer to “what is love” that is where I believe love is. The fact that regardless of the time when the cameras are rolling and lights blasting when it all goes dark the two people left continue to live their lives together… The montages and cuts from scene to scene are now flowing minute to minute and that relationship is built for those two characters to continue forward with, no fast forward, no rewind, no pause. Just each other. To me… That is love.
How do you get the exposure to an online dating profile in a sea of hundreds of thousands without sacrificing integrity and a sense of self? When my dad met his wife via online dating there was a much smaller pool of people who knew what online dating was. Now it is normal for a profile to start with “My friend made me make this profile” Or “I figured, since so many of my friends use this, I would try it out”.
Now no matter what I write here, I feel like I am holding a loaded gun and it scares me. I find self proclaimed “people gurus” often have the least idea of what a person is truly feeling. I call it being observant. Would it be so bad to fall into a mold of just being a “creative person” and taking the risk of writing this article? Or is the gun going to go off in my pocket for my own dating life?
We Control Our Content
Like many others I have googled “best dating profile”. And I kept coming up with the same conclusion over and over: Be anything but yourself. Uhmm… to which I think, we don’t have to dumb down our profiles. We control what is the “norm” when the content is driven by the users. Like life we have a choice to change, but it requires all of us. We want quick information, we want truth and honesty in profiles, we want an insight to those on these dating sites to cut out the bar hopping annoyance; so why not do it? Instead we wonder why, in a world of bite sized information, we feel ill informed on our dates, why they turn out to be a game of potluck when technology is giving us a way to make faster connections. We may like our news and coffee quick, but we all yearn for a “love” of some sort that lasts; are we all willing to put in the effort? Why can’t we just be ourselves? I have come to the conclusion that we have told ourselves we can’t. We have literally said, “I am too lazy, I do not accept, I will fill this out later”. We have accepted dating sites in their current form as “the way it is” instead of “what we want!”
I really enjoyed reading through your profile actually, it shows you are a mulch-dimensional person; unlike most profiles (and messages) on this website. Although, I do fall under my own criticism, I kept mine short and quite to the surface for “shits and giggles”. “ -Okcupid User
“Hello there 🙂 It was a treat to read your profile…you have a lot too say and you seem like a big thinker which is hot in my book lol. I can’t say I’ve invested as much in mine but you have me thinking I should lol.” – OKCupid User
We are setting the standards low for these sites by not actually putting in effort. Do we not realize we are the “customer” in this case.
Instead of following some “guide book” we can choose to be whatever we want and the site, in order to maintain its monetary worth has to adjust to us, not the other way around!
We are so caught up on instant gratification and the idea that we can have the “winning” profile that we forget to be ourselves, at all of the places, a dating site. The place to potentially find someone for the rest of our lives, like my father did. We are compromising on our own happy ending.
Popularity Contest
We have accepted the fact that OKCupid is turning our dating into highschool crushes. “Check Yes or No if you ‘like’ me”. Popular kids are marked by a red mark under their message box saying they “reply selectively and then the rest have orange or green.
I felt compelled to message you (despite the ominous red message saying you “reply very selectively.”) – OKCupid User
The site plays on humanities yearn for the “chase”, even if the excitement fizzles out after we actually get to know the other person. Get rated highly often, well OKCupid will now show you to more people who also are considered “attractive”.
P.S. Did you know OkCupid scales their subscription model depending on your age, sex, and location? It can range from 4.95 to 29.95. The younger and more “desirable” demographic you fit into, the lower the price. You can game this system as well, by changing your age and sex to that before purchasing the A-List.
Breaking the “Code”
It is programmed social interaction in 1’s and 0’s. So of course there are tons of “how to game the system” articles. Someone wrote the code, so it makes sense that someone else figured it out.
I have this plethora of information I have gathered, not because I am seeking to write a self help book, a “Rules of Engagement” book, or even boost my ego. I feel a deep desire to publish this article about my experience because, finally in a world oversaturated with online dating profiles, inundated google search results for “dating guidelines” consisting of compromises that go against the very definition (mutual concession), I have found a way to be myself 100%. But how can I talk about this publicly without being considered someone who has “manipulated the system” or worse yet, the people who I am interacting with? How do I tell people about this amazing feeling I have now, that I have validated my ability to be me without pulling the trigger on my own hard work? Especially because I still am looking for that person that makes an article like this obsolete in my life. A person who makes me shut down a dating profile for good. I am actually looking for the means to an end, to create a beautiful beginning; naturally, organically, and somewhat digitalized.
I have read, watched, listened to so many of the “how I hacked online dating”. Each has their own formula, statistical analytics, and long winded explanations.(My right brained personality can’t even open excel without wanting to rip out my eyes) But at the end of the day, would I be meeting people who really just wanted a guy who was “sarcastic and humorous with a side of manliness” or would I meet people I could truly connect with? How can I maintain my integrity and personality and follow all these “rules”? The truth is, for me, I can’t. I want to be able to go on that first date and know I can be 100% myself and I won’t feel upset or empty afterwards because I was portraying someone else’s ideal man, the “norm” of bar hopping, and “sarcasm/humor”.
“Most dating advice exists to “solve” this grey area for people. Say this line. Text her this. Call him this many times. Wear that. Much of it gets exceedingly analytical, to the point where some men and women actually spend more time analyzing behaviors than actually, you know, behaving. Frustration with this grey area also drives many people to unnecessary manipulation, drama and game-playing. “ – Mark Manson
Sure I have used some of the statistics to my advantage. OkCupid being the weapon of choice, has released many breakdowns of what people on their site are attracted to, photo and profile etiquette, and subsequent articles published about the best practices for the site. But it made me cringe when I would look at the “top” profiles listed in these articles. If one more person told me to keep my profile short, I was going to scream. I have a lot to say dammit!
“Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.”
HDR Black and White main photo(for that “manliness” appeal which I address in my profile to make sure there is no deviation from WHO I am**)
a dress shirt(for that classy approach)
a cat(luckily I own two and love them unconditionally, although only one makes for a good model)
combined with a self deprecating joke caption.
I follow up this piece of the puzzle with a very straight forward blurb in my profile that let’s me still be myself even though I succumb to the “statistics”.
**“If you are looking for the guy who is mysterious, I may not be your choice, not because I am not good at keeping the intrigue going, keeping you on your toes, or being a “man”, but because I choose communication over fighting down the road over notions of “who I am with you” and “who I am with myself”. I can dress nice, I can grow a beard, I can also shave and look like a total bum. I am great with my hands, but also text faster than a jack rabbit, doing what jack rabbits do quickly. Perception really. Your wants at the time of reading this and my perception of what I want. Does that mean if we agree with each others profiles it is inception? *epic music here*”
The rest of my photos are snippets of who I am, I include pictures I think I look good in(always followed by a caption that is not serious) and then my goofy side(followed by a caption that is serious). Playing off the contrasts of oneself.
The only photo that even uses a formula is my profile photo in black and white. The rest are just as many different variations of myself that I can provide. We have good days, bad days, exciting and boring days. So I want to show all of that. I want to be transparent.
Iterations
I have tried many many iterations of my profile, from a casual 1 line response, a ridiculously stupid humor only profile, to one where I tell all. Each got different types of responses, but none were even remotely personal. The less I wrote the more I got approached, but that approach often fizzled out before the first meet. I felt as if I was compromising myself by catering to the “percentages”.
The problem with all of my profiles is the length, it is said by every article about online dating statistics that a long profile is a death sentence.
I refused to believe you couldn’t write a long profile if you had something of interest or passionate to say. The problem is to get someone to actually read it. I found that if I put a disclaimer up front saying:
“My profile is long, if you are pressed on time you can skip it”
…was the tiny piece to the puzzle that made it OK. It allows those who don’t want to read it to just message me, that I am approachable, and feel as though looking at the pictures is a good enough start, but it also gives off the feeling of a challenge or accomplishment to those who might slog through my stream of consciousness.
“I actually read your entire profile…” -OKCupid User
Then it becomes difficult, how do you validate someone reading a small novel that is your “profile”? How do you not come across as too jaded or make the other person feel as though you are too good for them or have nothing left to offer? How do you convince a world addicted to 140 character limits that 500 words isn’t the finale of my personality?
“I read through your profile, and there were moment that I thought … “hmmm… This guy is a little too honest.” … Then I thought, “I use to be that honest… When did that become a bad thing?” “ -OKCupid User
This is what I thought, why can’t I be honest? Why can’t I be the un-abated version of me? I wanted the first conversations to not come as a shock as I clumsily fumble my way through the “getting to know” process. I wanted people to already understand I was not the perfect one liner, but someone who would blindly feel around to get to the deeper stuff, unafraid to humble myself or admit to it not working out. (and trust me this isn’t something you just inherently know how to do, but with some effort you can learn)
I look at an “About Me” as a place to really talk about me, not just pepper with ideas my mother has told me about myself, although those are nice too. Although, again, statistically improper:
“2) Don’t make your “About Me” opening section so long that even your mother would find it boring.“
One rule of thumb: If someone has to scroll down more than twice to get to the end of it, it’s way too fucking long. Give people an overview of who you are and what you care about. You don’t need to go into how much you’d love to find a man/woman to be your “partner in crime” (shudder) and everything you’re looking for in a relationship. Your objective at this stage is to find someone you can stand and who can stand you; don’t jump the gun. You can bore people with your hopes and dreams for love later.
Also, avoid listing adjectives to describe yourself such as the mundane “attractive,” “intelligent” or “funny” (see above). This is standard advice for writing that you’ve probably heard: Show, don’t tell. If you describe what you’re like and what you’re doing with your life, people reading your profile can see for themselves that you’re attractive, smart or funny. (Or not.)”
I mean I am not going to write a book, but I find self awareness to be sexy, so why not try my own hand at it as well? So I use the about me to give the general idea. But you need more than empty words on a website to show your true passion for your “idea” of yourself. This is where the section “What am I doing with my life” helped significantly.
My Occupation
My occupation as a photographer carries all sorts of stigmas, the most popular being:
“ I feel like you probably meet a lot of really beautiful people through your photography, so it amazes me that you are even on an online dating site. “ – OKCupid user
My own business model has been refined over and over again to try to break free of that, so I decided why not literally take the work I put into my mission statement for my photography and copy paste it here? Is it personal and exposing, sure! But if I am putting so much effort into my job, why can’t I do the same with my love life? It is many years of work and the blunt truth. It also shows passion, which I and apparently many others find sexy. So instead of looking at me as the guy who looks at “hot girls” all day, it shows that I am on a dating site, so obviously I am not trying to date my work and looking for something real here..
Add onto that, that passion doesn’t always pay the bills, hopefully the people I will attract, will understand I am doing what I love and all others need not apply. I will lose the “wallstreet” types here but I am trying to ease the blow of my work so later on, I don’t have to defend my career choice, and instead share it and be supported for it. I had the high paying job, sports car, beautiful apartment, and feeling of “making it”, but it didn’t make me happy or fulfilled.
My work section is a topic for many to intro themselves to me with, it plays into those who put an emphasis on work over the other sections of the profile provided, but again it is 100% me, no compromise needed.
Being yourself is OK, the validation:
Instead of breaking down every aspect of my profile, since honestly it has been written over time and is extremely stream of consciousness, let me explain why I feel it has been validated, against all odds, statistics, and google results.
“Hi 🙂 so I saw that you “liked” me and after enjoying your (very detailed) 🙂 profile I thought I would send a message rather than just a like back. Since you were so thorough in your descriptions I’ll just go ahead and put my truths out there too.
I love photography but the only class I’ve ever taken was my freshman year of college and only camera I have is my iPhone but still try to capture the special people, places and things I see that I know I’ll want to remember forever.
So I think that’s a lot for a first hello 🙂 especially since it’s 4am! I’ll let you digest and get back to me.
And thank you, your openness allowed for mine in return. It’s very much appreciated as it’s such a rarity now a days in life and especially in the online dating world :)” – OKCupid User
The technical “trick”
(Image representative of an hour during a 24 hour period)
You can rate people on OkCupid from 1-5 stars. Clicking the 5 star sends an email saying you like them, if they like you back it starts the conversation via a “You like each other” canned message. It removes your need for an opener and you know they are “interested” for the first convo at least.
5 Starring everyone isn’t as dumb as it sounds, it is sort of like being your own wingman(woman). You have to talk to everyone in order to finally catch the eye of the person you really want to talk to. But the reaction I could have never predicted.
“I must say, I initially “liked” you because of your cool profile pictures (…and, you have a cat in your main one…I mean, that’s kinda unfair…). Then, I read your absolutely refreshingly honest and interesting profile (yes, I read it all), and, though I rarely message people, I felt compelled to message you (despite the ominous red message saying you “reply very selectively.”)” – OKCupid User
I “like” you
The “like” button has a lot of mind fuckery power attached to it, when in turn if the site exposed people to one another in a more organic way such as a real life encounter, there would be more people seeing these kinds of interactions. But for now it is basically throwing empty promises at the wall, hoping someone will walk by in time to catch it. It feels degrading. It has the “celebrity effect”, where you are creating a bigger pool of “views” in order to catch the eye of someone who mixes well with you, but also having to not take the “fame” to your head and act better than other.
“Engaging, thorough, and much foresight = your profile… It’s overwhelming, yet a relief! Finally, someone on this site says it ‘as it is!’” -Okcupid User
“Hello there 🙂 It was a treat to read your profile…you have a lot too say and you seem like a big thinker which is hot in my book lol. I can’t say I’ve invested as much in mine but you have me thinking I should lol.” -Okcupid User
But if they knew the site did it automatically, would the “like” still make them respond? Would we once again fall into the idea that a long profile = dating suicide even though it is clear from the responses I have gotten we truly want more from these dating sites?
“Hello! I read your profile (twice…alright, three times actually haha!) and really enjoyed what you had to say! I appreciate the honesty and detail you put into your writing. That is so rare!” -Okcupid User
I’ve gotten some of the kindest heartfelt replies and messages from being myself; A kid at heart, a thinker, and a goofball stumbling over my words in person.
You get out what you put in
“I don’t write long messages usually but I thought you seemed worth the energy.” -OKCupid User
We apply this theory to our day jobs and so many other aspects of life, but because we have “labeled” online dating as a fo-pa, joke, or don’t fully understand it yet, I feel like we still are not completely ready to use it to make true connections. Can we truly be OK with a slightly digitized way of meeting when we still hardly know how to do it in person? We are happier feeling like we can carry around the “trophies” or “abundance of choice” in our pockets via our smartphones, than actually thinking beyond the instant gratification or validation of our egos.
Directly from an article that turned me on to the 5 star “trick” in the first place:
“It’s easy to see how the attention could become addictive, so I ask James: When does it end?
“I don’t know,” he says. He describes himself as “romantic,” but, like a lot of people who log on and see thousands of singles within a mile of their Zip Code, he’s not really stressed about the end. “A lot of us want the best: the best job, the best apartment, the best significant other,” he says. And in his case, that might mean being the best bachelor as well—someone with the best stories of dating adventures to tell. In fact, he can’t stop thinking about this one incredible woman he met recently; they danced until two in the morning. Then he tells me about another beautiful, smart woman who fed him meat loaf at three in the morning. And then there was that woman with …”
Not only can online dating become almost addicting with the “choices” it can work the opposite way by us fearing the other person’s choices as well. Dating can be intimidating.. with all the different dates we go on, it feels like a rush to the metaphorical finish line of “pulling full attention”. So we work hard to get it, but do we compromise just being ourselves for the “win”? – http://lostintxtlation.tumblr.com/post/91546586723/intimi-dating
I am online for dating because I believe in the idea that technology can help us to skip some of the less desirable parts of “meeting” and truly make great connections. If we don’t invest some time into an honest profile, aren’t we just showing our faces for a physical attraction and then drudging through figuring out what in the profile was real and a boasted version of self? How does this differ than going to a bar? We have so much more control over our “self” on these sites than we admit to and I feel like it is time we start acting on it. Putting in the same effort we do with our jobs, passions, and careers into our love life as well. Eventually we have to meet face to face with the person we start talking to to really get a feel for a good match, so why waste time with “white lies”.
If I ever find someone who truly believes in this too, I think the entire date, interaction, and experience will be much more enjoyable to both people. But remember, I don’t love you….
Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, “I don’t love you”… txt me maybe? This is what present day society seems to defend harder than “I love you”.
Scenario: You meet someone, you have a good night, and now you are presented with a conundrum… do you use technology to enhance the ability to reflect on the moments you just had, using the time away from one another to use as time to know each other more through the wonderful noninvasive form of messaging… or do you get lost in their past memories on facebook ignoring the ones you just had… or even worse are you forced into a situation of who can hold off from responding the quickest to messages we all know are read immediately or at the quickest convenience. We are secretly defending our “dislike” for one another than our possible “like”. We are being punished for what used to be a legitimate way of decompressing from a date: reveling in the glow of the night the next day. There is a reason songs like “Maria” from West Side Story were written. It is because on a good date, we hear music, and we don’t want to stop singing about it. We are not in love, we are in like, and it is really fun to share that feeling rather than feeling as if it will expose our “true intentions” to love them by the end of the day…
“Trying something completely different here. I am going to stray from the long profile, just gonna express it how it is; if there is an attraction, let’s meetup and take it from there. I can write a TON here, (request my old profile if you dare lol), but then I find there is too much “Type A” or “Type B” stereotyping without inflection, voice, and just plain getting to know one another organically. I have multiple parts to who I am, as I hope you do too and would rather get to know you via conversation to portray those. So anything beyond this point is just fluff, if you liked my pictures, in my opinion.. but feel free to wander.”
The reason for this is because online dating isn’t organic, not in the slightest, but I think that is OK, as long as we accept it for what it is and skip the bullshit inorganic parts of it and try our hand at meeting if there is an attraction. I mean if I thought you were attractive in person I would talk to you right away, not text you for days until we met again. I mean how much time do you want to invest into someone who might be super attractive but pheromones are just off and you can’t stand the smell of one another?
A dating profile or online dating “resume” as I like to call it, can never summate the stuff in your head. I want to find someone who understands the idea of discussion. The idea that if I say something weird, I don’t have to dive into the ditch I just dug, but be able to continue the conversation to other parts of the plot to see if there is another hole we can fall into together. The idea that living through someones past or stalking someones profile after a date is not giving your own mind the ability to breath and enjoy the moment you just created. Oversaturating your mind with their life not the moment you just had together.
We prefer to open up with questions that are shallow, but have a proven record of working.
“Did you get into any trouble last weekend?”
“Have any trouble planned for this weekend?”
This is how we open. Our first encounter is based on a very general idea of sparking conversation but we do it in a way that is trivial. “So how did you and X meet” Oh well I asked her what kinda trouble she was getting into and she told me “lots”. Then we got a drink and boned… wow…
I am a bit old school when I think about it in terms of asking someone to be my girlfriend or date, I believe since we only get one chance to do this with someone, it should be memorable. I like to let things happen organically, but I also like the grand gestures as well.
Organic or not if two people are open to something it can work. Problem is as you most people see it as “an experiment". I think what that truly means however is “fear of the unknown”. Online dating isn’t any more awkward than meeting in a bar. It all stems on one thing, actually meeting. These back and forths mean nothing until you hear my voice, see my face, and actually get a gut feeling for someone rather than an educated guess. I have strong opinions about online dating and I believe that is healthy. Because in actuality if someone found love from it, they would not turn it down.
Meeting
In the end we have to meet. Meeting is the only way to really know if the kind messages, sexy profile photos, or short or long profile are true to life. Being honest before hand is awesome and helps us to know if we want to spend our precious time with another person and online dating helps with this, especially for those of us with busy schedules. But it falls short with the amount of ways we can communicate prior to meeting. The first step to meeting is often exchanging numbers and texting. So we move away from the convenience of a keyboard where we can type many more words per minute, to a tiny screen in which we usually send texts of little to no consequence as fillers until we meet. Watching the little chat bubble pop up and down as the other person perfects their three word text to not feel too overbearing or interested.
“One of writing’s traditional advantages over speech is the time it affords you to collect your thoughts. This time empowers you to calculate your words’ effects on their reader. Rather than blurting out “YOU’RE SO HOT,” you pen a pleasing phrase: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Text and instant messages, however, are eroding this advantage. We don’t correspond over text and instant messages, like we do in letters; we chat in quick informal exchanges, like we do face-to-face. One of the underpinnings of spoken conversation is what’s known in linguistics as turn-taking. “We need some way of determining when someone else’s turn is over and ours can begin”.
The most common-sense workaround, of course, is to prepare your thoughts mentally before you begin typing them. That sounds easy enough, but some of us actually use writing as a way of working out our thoughts, not simply recording them after they’re fully formed. If nothing else we don’t consider the words blurted out of our mouths a finality but something that can be correct as can a word be spell checked after the entire paper has been written.”
The world isn’t ready for online dating if you ask me. It is a place to go after a breakup or to get recognition when you feel you have a flaw. It is made up of tutorials created by those who have written the same self help guides to sitting in a cubicle. The amount of messages that tell me mine is refreshing but theirs is “still a work in process” is proof enough in my eyes.
I will admit, I fell victim to the “OKRebound” after a bad breakup. I, as they like to call it, “serial dated”. A few dates a week to the point where I was showering just to go back out. It was vindicating and empty. But even when I explained it to people I met, they seemed to get it and accept it as a form of acceptable behavior. It was surreal. Actually the more my phone buzzed on the table with OKCupid notifications the more likely they would “be interested in me” without me having to say a word. It was a fucked up reverse psychology thing. I got over it pretty fast however. That isn’t what I wanted. And if someone else was going to like me more because of the “likes” I had, it was not a good indicator.
I wish I could express to people how online dating has as much potential as we allow it to and right now we aren’t allowing it more than a drunken nights dare or “I was bored so I made this profile… Oops did I post a shot of my ass in a bikini… Oh and I like long walks on the beach and sacrasm and the extra attention” *breaks computer screen*
“The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” states that when you want to get involved with someone new, in whatever capacity, they must inspire you to say “Fuck Yes” in order for you to proceed with them.
The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” also states that when you want to get involved with someone new, in whatever capacity, THEY must respond with a “Fuck Yes” in order for you to proceed with them.” – http://markmanson.net/fuck-yes/
Being online, is sort of like a gamification of dating to people.
“Haha I’m over it I just use it as a form of entertainment now just cuz I think what people say is funny I haven’t actually “used” it for what it’s for for a long time hAha you?” – OKCupid User
OkCupid’s Most Desirable
I got this message a month or two back. I was dumbfounded.
I knew the quantity of messages I was getting was not normal, but it was strange to get a message like this. It helped to validate that I could have a profile true to self and be considered desirable but it was a short lived moment when you compare it to who was actually picked to do the interview. I did not end up being used because they found someone who was much more TV worthy than I was, talking about how he uses “smileys” and “swiping techniques”, bragging about his lack of honest profile, how he lies on dates, and his general need to fuck as many people as he can through manipulation. You can watch that entire interview here: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/online-dating-secrets-desirable-24753151
I warn you though, I almost shut down my profile after watching this. It literally made me furious with humanity for letting someone like this exist, let alone thrive.
Why I still have a profile
Why am I on here? Because I believe there are other people who trust in a convenience like this and will use it the way they want versus how a YouTube video or article in the Huffington post tells you how to. And they will be genuine and accept it for what it is, an online meeting system in which you allow to match you with others and then go from there. Because it is convenient, not a bar that smells like piss and regret, a place you don’t want to be, or are too busy to be.
Because out of all the people I have met I have learned many things about online dating, more than I ever thought I wanted to know, and sadly these things show me how much people fall into to groups or patterns. I can change my profile picture to attract a specific nationality or put emphasis on a certain part of my profile for a specific type of personality. But it is when I go out on a date and those formulas and structures get blown out of the water and I am no longer giving my thesis or biography to the person across the table but talking to them because it is enjoyable, but mostly when I become scared… Scared that conversations break all conventions and preconceived notions Leaving me in a spot of vulnerability to want to share all but not knowing… Just feeling the need to do it anyway, that is what I date for. That 1 out of 100(that is different for every person) that will truly make me feel the the possibility of love and having to put every ounce of myself out on the table to make sure I give it my all regardless of the outcome. To open my heart I must be open to the idea of heart break. That is how I approach dating even if I start to see patterns or stereotypes or formulas for successful or unsuccessful dating profiles, first dates, and the like. Because in the end no matter what the formula is and what you think you know when you find the person right for you, the reason it is a magical moment is because you are no longer running on rails but off course, enjoying and living a moment.
But even if we go on a successful date we are still littered with obstacles to overcome.
It is so incredibly complicated getting to the second date these days. The rules of “3 days before a call” have long been muddied, if not completely forgotten. Now you are faced with the dilemma of liking an Instagram photo, responding to a Facebook post, texting an indifferent message once every day or two so not to seem too interested but still interested enough until schedules line up. The balancing act of texts between multiple dates, hoping you don’t message the wrong person the wrong response, timing your texts so not to be assumed you are overbearing.
All these unspoken “rules”, impossible to master without literally not giving a shit, because texts are usually two or three lines of nothing of consequence. So you sit there looking at your time stamps and read recipes wondering if the other person:
Someone actually suggested, after reading the article above, an app that allows you to further disconnect from your date to the online ether by having the app follow up on dates you have been on so you can let the person know without actually talking to them if you wish to go on a second date or not. I guarantee this becomes a reality and more reasons to feel completely disconnected from the person you are meeting or just met.
The OK in Cupid
I believe online dating is incomplete. It, by the very nature of humanity, is an iteration… constantly evolving to what we define it as. To say I have the answers or know where to go from here would be a farce. Whether online dating is just a way to get “experience” a so called practice date, or it will eventually evolve into a place where we don’t hide behind whatever semblance of online anonymity we are holding onto and finally realize how important we are to one another. Ultimately I just want to be able to find someone to come home to, to be real with… “the one person for me” is better than the girl of my dreams, she is real. So for now I say OK to being myself. I say OK to breaking the “online dating rules”. I say OK to OKcupid, where I am actually looking for something organic, in this inorganic clusterfuck that is online dating, because in the end, it is me I have to be OK with. And if you have two people who are just OK, you have two people in a better place than the “perfect online dating profile” you have something real, explosive, difficult, frustrating, exciting, and explorable. That there is the very inexplicable definition of love, which to me is the perfect beginning, because love is not enough...
A few things on my mind that make a good match, never really compiled together, usually thought about at different times, but compiled here in one list. The things that make me say “I love that about you”.
Confidence: When someone is constantly questioning their “self” it brings me down. I have my own “issues” and when two people cannot compliment one another’s issues versus just being conscious about them and accepting each other with them, it can turn toxic quickly. I don’t expect sunshine and roses every day, but I expect an understanding of one’s own issues. For instance, I know that I need affirmation of small things in my life… this quote taken from an astrology blog sums it up perfectly:
“I learned to understand my Leo by understanding that he needed positive re-enforcement for the little things. He needed me to be open to letting it all hang out with him or he tended to think I was not interested or had anything interesting to offer. This was out of my comfort zone but when I let go a little bit to him, it was a warm embrace that followed”
Sexuality: I have come to realize I am an extremely sexual person. Not in terms of OMG SEX, but in terms of being very in tune with what I like, what I like to give, how the person I am with needs to make me feel in order for me to want to give, and how I can often get lost in giving that I forget to take.
I have some kinks for sure, but they aren’t crazy; for example clothing textures: simple white bikini cut panties, the long tshirt and underwear, wireless bras(very european style), latex(my kryptonite), leggings(a lifestyle not just fashion), essentially I have realized I like smooth over lace. Don’t get me wrong lace is sexy, but I will 9 times out of ten be turned on by something that is silky or smooth or even simple cotton over a lace garment, mostly because it is nice to touch. I will often find a well put together outfit sexier than being naked.
I love to try new things. There is this wonderful place called the internet and while some may consider it a waste and you just “do” when sexing, I believe in learning, getting better, and trying new things. I recently ran across a video that showed a man having multiple orgasms from a certain type of tease/denial, it would be amazing if I found someone open to trying these things and not afraid to talk about them. Being afraid to talk about sex is a turn off. To me sex at its core definition is the default, everything else is the lead up and exciting parts. There is also something to be said for understanding when sex and making love is amazing and when foreplay is as well. Finding that comfort level with someone is also important so the new things aren’t scary, but exciting. Shit I wrote a review on one of the coolest sex toys for men with my real name attached to it because I believe in anything that will help to bring us to a better orgasm!
I have learned a ton about the female anatomy and pride myself on being very in tune with what feels good for a woman. I know in my mind that I will not rest until I get the woman to orgasm. It brings me pleasure, so I look at it in the same respect when reversed. If I think someone is giving up or isn’t into pleasing me, I will have trouble getting off. I am not the easiest to please but I would hope they would do everything they could to attempt to. To know someone is going to “stop soon” makes it hard to just be in the moment and turns into a “performance anxiety” rather than a pleasurable experience. If I have learned not only from experience but from watching, reading, etc… why should I expect any less from them?
One other thing, being equally dominant. I am by default the dominant one, but internally submissive. To grab someone by the back of the head and push them toward a wall for a monumental kiss to be reversed into that same wall is mind blowing to me. TO never know the outcome because both people are scheming (so to say) the next move.
Body Temperature: This is going to sound weird, but I run hot. I always have. I literally have a fan at the foot of my bed for my feet sometimes. So finding someone who I can lay next to and not be uncomfortable because of our temperatures is important. Not a deal breaker but an added bonus.
Voice: I never thought someones voice could be so important, but the sound of someone is extremely important. Being able to love to hear the person you are with is great. It is amazing when you meet someone you love to hear. You don’t even realize until you meet them, because it isn’t something I would consider a “first impression” kind of thing. It just soothes the soul so to say.
Body type in relation to mine: I don’t really have a set body type, height, or preference except for the fact that when I hold someone I want to feel as though I can hold them close. I want to feel their arm pull my arm close as we spoon and our bodies matching up in the right curves. I put a specific amount of energy into taking care of my body so I often look for someone who does so as well. While it is nice to meet those with fast metabolisms, I want someone that will be an inspiration to me and me to them when we get older. I want us to be able to push each other to stay fit, strong, and virile when our bodies begin to break down. I don’t want to be that old guy who sits all the time, I want to be the one who takes trips to exotic islands and makes the young people go “whoa I wanna be like that when I get older”.
Socially Adept: I want someone who has the ability to compliment my outward personality. When we go to an event I want to be able to branch off from each other and not have to worry. I also want us to work well as a whole when interacting. Complementing one anothers statements and sentences, making for an interesting conversation.
Phone Calls: If you get anxiety using a phone to call someone rather than text, it may be a deal breaker. Now if you call me instead of text, you have secretly made me smile from cheek to cheek.
Forward Thinking: I apply this to the idea of one day perhaps having a child. I want my wife to be someone who wants to raise a child in an environment where the kid is open with the parents. Feels safe with the parents. Maybe doesn’t want to go to the movies every friday night with us, but during breakfast can tell us if their life is OK and can call us when to drunk to drive at some party. I always think of the parents in the modern adaptation of The Scarlet Letter called “Easy A”.
Calm but not passive: My life growing up was hectic. My parents were masters at making mountains out of mole hills. I want someone who understands what is important and what is not. What is OK when it goes wrong and when it is actually time to freak out.
Balances Work and Life: I love working, I love passion, I love drive, but I also know that majority of the work we do is filler until we die. Morbid eh? But I believe that putting more emphasis on relationships and the people around you is more important than the work till you drop attitude. We only get one shot at this, so I want to be able to love hard and work hard all at once. Finding the balance between what you love and who you love is important.
Looking good together: Nothing feeds my Leo ego more than when I am with my significant other and someone says, “You two look so cute together” or “Where are you two from?” This means we probably have a matching sense of style, give off a good aura, and look good together. I absolutely love that. Plus anytime someone asks me where I am from as if I am not from the US, I take that as a compliment considering I think European culture and style is far more eloquent.
Cultured: I spent a lot of my life abroad and have adjusted my ways to many of the things I found interesting and more befitting of my lifestyle. I don’t go crazy when I see boobs, I don’t objectify women, I don’t use words like rape, gay, and fag. I want someone who is equally cultured. Who doesn’t HAVE to travel all the time, but enjoys it knowing they can get the same “cultural” feel with the person they are with and how they adjust their own lifestyle. It isn’t where we live, but how we live.
Running to Jump Together: I want to feel like Mr. and Mrs. Smith with my significant other. Each with their own specialties, but both extremely competent at survival and basic instinct skills. I want to trust that I can jump into traffic with my significant other and come out unscathed without having to endanger myself by worrying about them. The ability to adapt to multiple situations that didn’t always have an app to solve it or a service to complete it. Mind you I don’t mind using those after trying once, but at least give it a shot.
These are just a few things I have seen that I like to be lined up. Do I need them all, NOPE, do I like them, yup. Might they change in a day, sure. Do I have a mold, no. Do I hold people to ridiculous standards, not really. All in all I expect someone I am going to love and allow into my life so intimately to be someone who I can say puts into life the same effort that I do. The rest is just frosting on the cake. Because it really sucks when you feel as though you are approaching life so differently than the person you are with that it almost hinders growth. It is the difference between traveling with someone and traveling on someone.
I hope you don’t know what you want! I mean, that would be fucking terrible. The worst thing in this world is to meet someone who knows what they love, follows their passions, and has an intense personality about it. This comes second only to “googling it” in person and using hashtags in your vernacular…
When did we decide it was a bad idea to think about the future? Why is it such a faux pas to imagine what your possible kids will look like or how a person will be as the mother of your possible children? Am I the only one who thinks of these things within minutes of meeting someone? I am not applying it to the person to put into effect right away, but of course it is natural to think of these things. It is kinda biology. These fleeting thoughts are important and very subconscious in how they are controlled, but most people seem to be afraid of them. Society has put a stigma on it if by accident you slip and say something about the future too quick. You are then categorized as overbearing or clingy. But it isn’t meant that way. I think there is a bit inside all of us that has envy over those who exude a sense of “self purpose”. The people who knew what they wanted to do with their lives since they were in middle school usually get scoffed at. I think it stems from jealousy of not always being in the same boat. Personally I bounce around from many passions, but I am aware of what those are and I am also aware of passions I should not pursue, because quite honestly I don’t have the skills for them. So if applied to dating, if you were to say, “Oh man my Mom would love you” oh the repercussions… I don’t know when we started looking at one another as if one sentence is the summation of an entire whole of who we are, but it is crap.
The brain does not generate distinct “thoughts,” so it is impossible to calculate how many thoughts the brain has per second. In addition, there are a number of subconscious processes that occur in the brain at all times. The stream of thinking people seem to hear in their brains is only part of what the brain is doing at any one time, and inhibitory processes prevent people from being conscious of all of these thoughts. The human brain is always active.
A dating profile or online dating “resume” as I like to call it, can never summate the stuff in your head. I want to find someone who understands the idea of discussion. The idea that if I say something, I don’t have to dive into the ditch I just dug, but be able to continue the conversation to other parts of the plot to see if there is another hole we can fall into together.
We prefer to open up with questions that are shallow, but have a proven record of working.
“Did you get into any trouble last weekend?”
“Have any trouble planned for this weekend?”
This is how we open. Our first encounter is based on a very general idea of sparking conversation but we do it in a way that is trivial. “So how did you and X meet” Oh well I asked her what kinda trouble she was getting into and she told me “lots”. Then we got a drink and boned… wow…
I am a bit old school when I think about it in terms of asking someone to be my girlfriend or date, I believe since we only get one chance to do this with someone, it should be memorable. I like to let things happen organically, but I also like the grand gestures as well.
I have thought about how it might be to have someone to come home to, wake up to, bring home on holidays, get an animal with, own a house with, marry, kiss, fuck, cuddle, and everything in between since I was young. So I don’t think getting older is making me want the answers any quicker nor has it changed when I think of them. But they still happen when my brain decides to think of them.
If I feel a connection with someone, my brain goes off to many different places. If I happen to slip an actually feeling here or there, it should be cute, not creepy. The difference between me and the thought process is that I know, because I am not an idiot, that I don’t expect these bigger picture things right off the bat, I know I don’t know you that well yet, and I know they are just natural emotions to have, but I am not afraid of them, because if, after we get to know one another, it is working, I can’t wait to experience them with you.
We have 90% control over how we perceive things and how we deal with them. For some reason we have decided that these fleeting thoughts, these tiny moments in a bigger conversation, and these things that might make us feel a little bit uneasy, are deal breakers. Instead perhaps we should embrace conversation and reflection, allowing us to truly open ourselves up to the person in front of us, letting us know if we actually want to follow through on the “warm fuzzy puppy dog” feelings down the road, instead of hiding them and pretending to be in a position of “power”. The power balance in a relationship is important, but the power balance when you first meet is even more. If you don’t allow yourself to lose a little control, you are wasting time in a life not filled with that much of it. I believe in the idea of allowing things to be wrong, in order to correct them or talk them out. I believe in the idea of telling how I am that day when asked, even if I am shitty. In the end, that is who I am, and in the larger scheme that is how you get to know someone. One day at a time, one moment at a time, one thought, one emotion, one date at a time. Because at the end of the day, when we just met I don’t already love you and I probably don’t even miss you.
Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, “I don’t love you”… txt me maybe? This is what present day society seems to defend harder than “I love you”.
Scenario: You meet someone, you have a good night, and now you are presented with a conundrum… do you use technology to enhance the ability to reflect on the moments you just had, using the time away from one another to use as time to know each other more through the wonderful noninvasive form of messaging… or do you get lost in their past memories on facebook ignoring the ones you just had… or even worse are you forced into a situation of who can hold off from responding the quickest to messages we all know are read immediately or at the quickest convenience. We are secretly defending our “dislike” for one another than our possible “like”. We are being punished for what used to be a legitimate way of decompressing from a date: reveling in the glow of the night the next day. There is a reason songs like “Maria” from West Side Story were written. It is because on a good date, we hear music, and we don’t want to stop singing about it. We are not in love, we are in like, and it is really fun to share that feeling rather than feeling as if it will expose our “true intentions” to love them by the end of the day… Some of my best childhood memories include talking about the same kiss over and over with my date the next day on the phone when we couldn’t see each other for another week due to school, work, or our parents haha. It is old wives gossip, but about the feelings you are being swelled up with. Now we have so many ways to do it and instead of embracing it, we outcast it, we make those who use it feel restricted, and we ultimately restrict our own growth and natural inclination to be “obsessed” in the best possible definition of the word. Why does it matter if we give off the “vibe” that we have 1 or 20 different people we are talking to at once. There used to be a thing called courtship and even less exciting, interest that doesn’t fade the minute the date ends. I prefer interest, intrigue, and the yearn for more. I choose to embrace it, regardless of my future dating schedule that I feel inclined to play out or my past dates. If that night felt amazing, I want to share that moment with you for a little longer. And for someone that multi tasks his breaths, it is extremely valid.
Personally, the last time I said I love you to someone it literally took my chest almost exploding to squeeze it out and when it came out it was messy, tear filled, but it felt right. I love you is probably the hardest phrase for me to squeeze out of my mind, heart, and mouth. With the amount of divorces within my family, I air on the side of caution as it is. I believe in the small grand gestures still. I believe that asking someone to be your girlfriend is as important as to marry you, because you only get to do it once in the relationship.
Although I must admit if you looked at this blog out of context of me as a whole you might think all I want is love, but I just love to think about it, discuss it, and those thoughts are literally a fleeting second of a billion others. I analyse, I think, I observe. This is all part of who I am. I will pick sides of the fence and dig in, not because I expect to be right, but I believe in choosing things with the chance of a conversation later on to change it. I eat humble pie well. But I grew up with a lot of teeter tottering of those around me, so I built into myself the ability to decide and move forward. I think that alone can often scare people, because they don’t want the “conflict” or “debate”. To me it is part of the normal conversation. I often get told “let it happen”, “don’t think too much”, but I can’t. I am not wired that way. That is OK too, it just may differ from another, and that is OK too. But both are valid as long as you feel it is the way you want to be.
“I observe the world around me way more intensely than some, which may sound like it is stressful, but for me it is just the quick fire of a synapse in the brain, and it is over. I can totally chew gum and walk at the same time. This is why my heart, under a microscope, is probably bandaged up, split, cracked, and splintered, but still pumping strong. So if you can multitask thoughts, understand that I am not married to just one outcome of a conversation, and enjoy talking because it leads to… more talking.”
This often relates to first dates in terms that I think I am still trying to convince people I am worth their time when first meeting. Sure I have been making sure to take care of myself and the slew of new things I have learned:
One thing I am yet to shake is my childhood need for acceptance… approval… making them know I am worth their time. That is one backward ass sentence. But when you feel like you are in a proverbial rush to the finish, the finish being “interest” or “other suitors”, you can often find yourself giving so much so fast that it becomes a less intimate way of sharing and just a bullet list of things you don’t want to have to regurgitate. Thinking the shock and awe value floating over your head later might hurt things. Mind you these things are you, but I have often convinced myself if we don’t get it all out on the table right now we will probably ruin everything later or run out of time to tell them in the first place before the race ends. The difference between the European “How was your day” and the American answer of Good, versus “Well actually it was X Y Z, good or bad”. But this is where time is truly needed:
And it is amazing how time can slow when two people are ready and willing to step forward together.
What I forgot and is extremely important… when a person is interested in you for you, they make it known. There is no romantic comedy “chase”. There may be some resistance where they will tease back, but they will put forth effort too, they will want to see you, text you, talk to you, like your posts, etc. You won’t just one day “come out of the romantic closet” to the other person. Interest goes both ways and manifests both ways. If they cannot show it and you need it to be shown, perhaps it isn’t the right match. If you like to put in effort and they can show you what you need to feel the sense of approval than so be it! But it is so true that just going with the flow in this scenario is a better decision.
If you are looking for the guy who is mysterious, I may not be your choice, not because I am not good at keeping the intrigue going, keeping you on your toes, or being a “man”, but because I choose communication over fighting down the road over notions of “who I am with you” and “who I am with myself”. I can dress nice, I can grow a beard, I can also shave and look like a total bum, and wear plaid. I am great with my hands, and will always choose to try to fix something first before asking for professional help. My grandfather who could build the craziest inventions on a workbench only I was allowed to share with him, my grandmother a seamstress who taught me textiles and sewing, and my mother who combined both of these in her creative approach also gave me the gift of music and art that led to a skillset that is diverse in nature. But I also text faster than a jack rabbit, doing what jack rabbits do quickly. I am plugged in at the hip to most things technology, both because I have to and want to. There is something to be said about going off grid from time to time though, and ultimately I would want to find someone to pull back from the need to use social media versus the enjoyment of casual perusal. It comes down to perception: Your wants at the time of reading this and my perception of what I want. Does that mean if we agree with each others ideas it is inception? *epic music here*
I am really not a fan of bars or packed clubs… Every now and again it is enjoyable but I am 9 times out of 10 happier with you laying on me in the middle of the park. Shit I am even happy without talking and just enjoying the people and falling asleep in the afternoon. Does that mean I don’t like going out? Hell no, I love it, but I love the woods, I love the water, I love working on a project, building something with my hands, wearing my most comfy outfit while sitting on the patio but enjoying the company of everyone around. Grab a drink, don’t grab a drink, order some food, whatever you want. I want to wake up the next morning after cuddling with you to have coffee, knowing damn well that this is going to make us both have to poop. It is calm and natural. Also I am damn good at doing nothing and being 100% ok with it. I do not have FOMA (fear of missing out). I did when I was younger but then I realized that fear was actually causing me to miss out… Mostly on enjoyable things by forcing myself to look for it too much, often ending in tiring boring nights of the same old shit.
Watching the other people at bars and clubs makes me hate civilization. Looking at these people lining the walls, with a fake “yo I am cooler than you” face is weird. Watching every girl coming in with more and more ass hanging out confuses me. Sitting in the corner of a smelly room paying excruciating prices for a glass of 20 dollar bottle of wine. I will never understand it. Shit I wanna use that dance floor to make a fool of myself. Surrounded by people who will enjoy it. I would prefer the opposite of any dance film where everyone is a professional and just have the worst person in the middle be the winner.
I often try to think of ideas for third and fourth dates and I realize I want to do the same thing I would suggest for 1 and 2, food, a museum, the park, a hike, pool, maybe a movie on the couch? Do I feel like it makes me less attractive, yes. I feel as though to fit in sometimes you have to know the best restaurants in this city of culture and diversity. You have to be able to suggest the best wine, not to mention afford it. You have to write that you like sarcasm and travel in your dating profile, even if majority when really broken down in percentage of time their travel to staring down at the phone ratio would paint a different picture. I am extremely well traveled. I don’t have a want to travel just to travel, I have a want to experience together. But I am truly just happy to be with you. As long as we are looking in the same direction, laughing at the same people we walk by, I am happier with you, and noticing the weird looking squirrel than wherever our destination may be, hopefully you notice the squirrel too. I am also content just to be doing our own thing but around each other. (according to those close to me, I can be 1000 times more productive when someone is just sitting with me) I find that exploring and finding the cool places with you would be more fun than a fully planned out evening ever could be. I also wonder if asking you to the park on a first date is going to make me less “mysterious” and a “man’s man”, hindering my ability to “court” you. Does a big bill and drinks = fuckable and a calm day in the park = boring? I just wanna scream “YOU DON’T KNOW ME!” sometimes.
I honestly fantasize about living as far from a busy city as you can get. I fantasize of waking up to the smell of coffee, going into the yard and doing some work. I’ve always loved to just walk outside barefoot to get a breather from the day, it inspires me, it gives me life. Then perhaps I go to work or do some chores, ultimately ending up home next to you, maybe you are reading a book leaning on me as I fall asleep or we are just in the same house finishing up what we need to do. But we are together and there is no pressure other than the need to take care of life, each other, and check in on youtube cat videos here and there. I think with the right company this lifestyle will give more pleasure than a fast paced, high paying, job could ever. Or why not both? I mean we were raised with the idea that eventually we find a job/career, make money, and love, yet we always seem to put love on the backburner.
But back on topic, will our first date in the park be on the day you really wanted a drink in a bar? You never know, but at least, we get to meet in person, and at least feel if there is something there instead of googling it. And I have come to a somewhat understanding that I am ok with this choice of date, as long as it means being me.
“What I’m trying to make a point of is yes it’s those little simple everyday human things that I wish people valued more It’s the smallest things that create real intimacy and the smallest things that create and lead to big things“ – A.A.A.
Disclaimer: I know the difference between a “Safety Date” and a woman’s needs in a world that is not so “Safety” oriented for them. Predatory men are everywhere and it hurts my damn soul to even have to write a disclaimer like this. My 5 sisters experiences and teachings have shown me so much more than I think many men have seen when it comes to, even just walking down the street with one headphone in or with nothing playing at all. I can’t even imagine what that is like. This entry is me talking about when I know it’s a “Safety Date” for the sake of what this entry will get into. Not actual safety. It’s weird too because, I’ve asked enough people to FaceTime or call prior to a meeting and even with the dangers of just meeting from Online Dating, I’ve been hit with an extreme amount of resistance to anything that might be considered the smart decisions(no not giving out your phone number and revealing information, but utilizing less invasive methods) that I wonder why every girl, after seeing the abuse my sisters go through, wouldn’t jump at the idea of “If there is no visual confirmation/Facetime/Instagram Video/Signal call, then we don’t meet”. Just seems like the responsible thing to do. Ok, so that out of the way, let’s talk about the “Safety Date” from my perspective, as a man, who also respects and abhors that woman have to be extra careful.
I have too often gone on dates where I am told via text before arriving(because that is what we do to avoid the awkward conversations these days), “I have to leave in an hour, meeting a girlfriend for X Y Z”. Now this could be true or it could be total bullshit. The amusing factor is it is done for the same reason every time: a safety net from a bad date. For a person like me that couldn’t even quite deal with the timer on a Mario game back during my childhood, these trivial times on dates make me not want to leave the house in the first place. I am going on a date to enjoy the time, not plan for it to be a disaster or feel like I will lose an extra life if I go over the designated timelimit.
I have been on my fair share of dates where I realize within a few minutes of meeting that there is literally no connection. It is amazing what being in person with three dimensions, voice, pheromones, and close contact can have versus a two dimensional photo on a dating site and the obligatory resume or the notorious “About Me”.
So what do I do? I can tell you what I used to do; nothing. I would slog out the night filling the empty space with “uh huhs” and “yeahs”. Constantly checking my phone hoping candy crush(disclaimer I never have nor will I ever play that game!) will somehow become the worlds best excuses app, but constantly realizing all I have in the pipe is “My grandmother died”… and then I feel guilty for thinking it. Yeah not a very good one. So now I am not only doing a disservice for myself but to the person across from me. Trying to be boring enough so maybe they will want to end it and take the burden off me. To me that is exactly what the “timer” is, a tedious way to regulate a date before it even begins and if we are having a great time, trust me I don’t want you to leave just to keep the facade alive of your “plans”.
What do I do now? I tell the person the truth. WHAT!? You would be amazed at how much less invasive the truth is. This is NOT a skill I had inherently, this was something I had to teach myself. I had to build up my own belief in the idea that I need to protect myself a little bit as well. Not from danger but from situations that made me uncomfortable. I was asked once, “why did you stay if you were not enjoying your time?” I said, “I didn’t know what to say.” I was answered quickly, “Why not the truth”… I literally laughed out loud, but when I saw they were serious and considered it a way to care about and/or protect yourself a bit, for someone who is used to giving, I saw the figurative lightbulb over my head light up. I needed to figure out a “timer” without hindering the possibilities of a good date. So I decided to go with the truth. Trust me the first few times were a little messy, but even the worst ones(which were not that bad), I got a text later on thanking me for my honesty and it was just not something they were used to. And ya know what? It felt really good to be able to protect that inside of myself that feels trapped when I am with someone I am not interested in. It let me go about my day/night the way I wanted without wasting time and energy on something I knew wasn’t going to work. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you are on a train wreck so horrific you can’t even get yourself to look away, but what I didn’t realize is how much less jaded I got when I was able to go into a new date and know I was in control of my own comfort, if I felt no connection I could now openly explain to the other person, in a kind way, that I would like to end it right then, instead of dragging out something and being totally fake. It has made internet dating so much less nerve wracking. It doesn’t lead anyone on and it gives you actual control over something I always thought was uncontrollable.
So how is this different than the timer? I suppose different strokes for different folks, but imagine this if you may… If everyone approached the first date like this, would you even need to tell someone in what would become a redundant, yet currently obligatory text at the end of the night, “I had a good time”. If you made it through the date, guess what is implied? Yup. One change would make a ripple effect on how dating feels. It could literally make a good date that much better because no one is leaving the date wondering. I often reference European culture in respect to not having to question a date and how it went, and being able to be yourself. Take a gander at this article: http://www.myfrenchlife.org/2014/06/18/french-vs-american-dating/ A kiss in the French culture means exclusive. Hookups are less of a faux pa and “dating” doesn’t exist, they don’t even have a word for date. So there is a much more distinct line between getting to know someone comfortably and openly than just trying to get laid. The difference between a date where you are following strange dating mechanics of “doing” rather than “being”. But one step at a time. What do you think? Will you choose to tell the truth next time? Because it really is just that, a very conscious choice. And even if it feels harder, it ultimately ends up being easier on your soul.
I am extremely passionate about the world. I love to be a part of it, analyzing it, figuring it out, being frustrated that I can’t always get the answer. But I will fight tooth and nail to find out or talk my way into an answer! Shit I think I am passionate about being passionate… and when I am not, it shows clear as day.
Being in a city of passionate people, I want to explore the places familiar and unfamiliar with someone I can hold in my arms, to make the experiences different as if it was the first time all over again, because you are there.
I have so many interests, I am not a cookie cutter, I like to try it all. I want to be peeled back like an onion, and I will even help you peel back the pieces to speed up the process, I have always believed in getting to know someone without reservation or thought of “I could get hurt” because honestly, how many times can you go into a situation like meeting someone new with those ideals and not miss out on what could be or waste time on what shouldn’t be because of caution. Damn straight I am OK with being hurt, that is the risk to finding the perfect match isn’t it? If we all strive for Money, Careers, and Love, why is it that Love always gets the stepchild treatment when it comes to the effort we put into it. Why are we so afraid to go after it the same we would react to someone offering us a million dollars to jump eyes closed into a once in a lifetime opportunity. I know people will fight tooth and nail for their goals in life, so why not put that same effort into a relationship.
To me that is the part where I am learning, learning to protect myself from myself. How does one date and protect themselves while being open and sharing to get to know the the other person. I have always been very bad at the protecting myself part. I often share a lot which in turn makes the other person comfortable with me but what am I getting in return to feel comfortable as well. I need to learn how to “reject” those who I do not feel are good for me. I need to stop compromising myself and what I love so as a strange validation that I am me. I am always me. You could be my mother, my best friend, my co-worker, I will talk to you and treat you the same. I don’t want to worry about my different “personas” I will get lost, I will forget my own name. I hope the right person can realize I am not their ex-boyfriend and won’t treat me as such. I often make the perfect “first date” to go on with if you just broke up with a boyfriend, and you are actually not looking to date, but want company and need help sorting the massive mind fuck you and him created for one another. However I am not going through more years of school to get a doctorate so I can legitimately start charging per hour. I still am looking for that person that makes a blog entry like this obsolete in my life. A person who makes me shut down a dating profile for good. I am actually one of the few looking for the means to an end, to create a beautiful beginning; naturally, organically, and somewhat digitalized.
I will 99 out of a 100 times be more inclined to sit with the person I am dating, talking, than I will be to go to a club.
I think being able to walk down the street and being on the same wavelength of what grabs your attention is important. It is the difference between pulling on your sleeve and yelling,
“OMG LOOK THERE LOOK THERE LOOK THERE” before you miss it and just turning to you and bursting into laughter together.
I understand NYC is a city of don’t look up but I believe even though I too do not look up, seeing the people and the environment of social euphoria breaths a certain life into my spirit. I took that for granted when I moved to California after living out there for 5 years and moved back to NYC for the social/cultural inspiration I grew up with. So YES I point out the street performer that I think is amazing, and yes I talk about the people I see that strike my fancy, or the conversation I overhear from the person on the subway next to me, I still get motivated by them as part of this walking canvas NY.
I do NOT have all my life goals together, my career, my head, they are not clear, they are in process, scary, anxiety inducing spurts of extremes, and I think that is OK. I have a different opinion on the “knowing yourself” before you can meet someone else. Albeit I respect who I am and don’t really have walls to life, and really am always me 24 / 7(with some help here and there to remember) but I thought a lot about that idea and I came up with, I believe we will find ourselves till the day we die because the days leading up to death define us, as well as the people we meet. So if we didn’t look while we were also finding ourselves it would be too late. I believe it isn’t how people interact doing different things but how they are with each other at the moments in front of them.
Three years ago to the day I left a very good job in terms of “job standards” to pursue my passions and to fill the emptiness in me that I would call ultimate happiness. It was hard and continues to be. I am not your 100k+ a year guy anymore, nor do I prioritize that. If I wanted money to be the deciding factor I would have stayed put, but it turns out money really cannot buy you happiness, only a SHIT TON can lol. (no I don’t expect someone to buy me dinner, but I do expect a mutual respect of financial comfort)
The last thing I want people to know, is I believe that people judge on snippets like these too often, when in turn these are just small layers of who we are, and to me the cool part of this is that we can talk about it after we write our blurbs. It allows us to see past the MOMENT that this was written and know the person as a whole.
It is so incredibly complicated getting to the second date these days. The rules of “3 days before a call” have long been muddied, if not completely forgotten. Now you are faced with the dilemma of liking an Instagram photo, responding to a Facebook post, texting an indifferent message once every day or two so not to seem too interested but still interested enough until schedules line up. The balancing act of texts between multiple dates, hoping you don’t message the wrong person the wrong response, timing your texts so not to be assumed you are overbearing.
All these unspoken “rules”, impossible to master without literally not giving a shit, because texts are usually two or three lines of nothing of consequence. So you sit there looking at your time stamps and read recipes wondering if the other person
A is just not interested
B doing the same shit
C has nothing interesting to say
So you question saying hi because saying hi is so damn easy these days. Nothing rings, no running to the phone, just hit a button, tap a screen, flush, and be on your way. The amount of times someone like me who enjoys conversation and interaction gets questioned if I am overzealous is hard to count. If I am in love with you after one date, first you must be amazing beyond words for a text, and secondI woulda sent you flowers.(this is not a dead art dammit!)
(Shit having this blog makes most people assume I am obsessed with love.)
This period between date one and maybe even three or four is confusing, judgmental, and just plain silly. The “I had a good time with you tonight” and if you are feeling generous and not cryptic “would love to see you again” is usually the only sane text after and before date one. It happens somewhere between one and two hours after the first date ends and is usually met with an “I agree” or “me too” but it never defines when you will see the other again. So you are now wondering, should I follow up with a time, or do I wait until tomorrow since I just left. There is no more “distance” because it is so easy to talk immediately after seeing one another. Questioning your own texts perchance they will be taken out of context of trying to get to the next date sucks. Then the time between setting up a time and the date… should you send a few texts here and there to get to know them a bit more?
In my opinion we should use all these communication methods not as a label for “desperate” but a tool to transition smoothly from one date to the next. i understand some people are nuts, but isn’t that what the first date was for? You should probably have a good indication of crazy or not by now. This would allow us some time to talk a little more about our daily life that isn’t considered proper first date etiquette. But nope… We stumble and question and end up looking at a slew of texts over a period of time assuming the other person, if their texts start to amount to something more than a screen’s worth,(mind you this is still probably no more than 10 sentences on 4 inch screen), is a loser, has no other prospects, is obsessed, or likes is more than them. All of this is a false sense of balance and it blows. And remember if you see the “is typing” animation don’t text before it sends or you look too desperate… Growing up in the AIM generation doesn’t help me here haha.
Don’t even get me started on trying to call someone…..
You can say I miss you to someone within the first few minutes of meeting them, but what are you truly missing? I think I have always thought it would be nice to miss someone or just default to saying it as a kind way of saying I was looking forward to seeing them again. However, I am starting to realize that I may have been using it wrong, missing the idea of what I saw as a glimmer of hope of what could be. Having it feel good but stop at that. How long does it actually take to truly miss someone? I am talking about missing them as a being not as a thought. Not missing the process, but missing their conversation, missing their laughter, missing their personality, missing how they make me feel and how I perceive I make them feel. I miss you can feel so much better when you truly feel like their actions, words, physicality, affection, and who they are makes you feel… for lack of a better term, complete.
I would almost go as far as saying “I miss you” can be taken in similar light as “I love you” but because it is not as in your face, it is thrown around much easier. Kinda like saying “I heart you” before you are ready to truly say “love”.
That’s why date two..three… four…are way more important than date one in terms of truly understanding the person in front of you. As much as I would love to believe in “love at first sight” my logical side sees how you can only truly get to know someone so much each time you see them. Have you seen them cry? Have you had the chance to decide on what to eat while watching Netflix? Have you taken the time to wake up to them? Have you felt them in your arms while you slept? Have you talked to them after a bad day of work? Have you run around the park with them on a warm day? Have you laid out on the grass in the middle of the day with them saying nothing at all? All of these things are important to establish a baseline of who they are. Much to my own dislike for delayed gratification, take time. You start to dispel the “idea of the person” and see the person in front of you.
So who is to say, once you truly, actually, full heartedly “miss” someone, that perhaps you are or have fallen in love with them too. I feel as though you can still miss the touch of a person, the chemistry of a person, and just the general feeling of not being alone in a very saturated world of Tinders, Okcupids, and Women/Men at a fingers swipe. And it is easy to quickly say “I miss you” and for it to feel sweet and sincere. But when you truly think about it, when you truly allow yourself the part of your mind that processes moment to moment as well as the larger picture, to truly miss someone and to understand what it means to say it, I believe will and should feel different. I want to, when saying or for that fact, hearing “I miss you”, know the person actually has a grasp of me and misses the person I am and not the idea of who I can be or the hole I might fill, if after that sunova bitch… time; which is the catalyst for truly knowing a person beyond what a few pre-planned dates can deliver, it turns out we truly do miss each other.
P.S. I feel like there is something about getting away from someone and then coming back fresh and having a new experience that shows you something new about them. I think you can MISS SOMEONE don’t get me wrong, but to MISS MISS someone I feel like it is two different experiences in one expression. Basically time is the ONLY way to get all the pieces to the puzzle that is “us” as human beings. And I am sure there is a certain point where we have enough to feel the “miss” part as knowing another person is an ongoing thing, but without the actually time clocked, I think there is an actual information barrier that cannot be completed.
Dating can be intimidating.. with all the different dates we go on, it feels like a rush to the metaphorical finish line of “pulling full attention”. So we work hard to get it, but do we compromise just being ourselves for the “win”?
It’s all about perception, state of mind, and timing.
Will tomorrow be a day of bliss or agony for you? Maybe it felt slow for you, maybe it felt fast… then we have a date and you meet me with the day on your mind. Now will my day counter or compliment yours? Will my timeline, like an inner monologue match speeds?
What if you had a date yesterday. What if it went well? Do you now compare everything I say to the good you saw from that date? Of course. It is natural. But does this affect the whole?
What if the date was terrible and it makes my mediocre seem refreshing?
Timing, perception, and general ability to be the same person we are when doing errands as we are on a date all play an important role in the first date. If we can be who we are with our friends with this new person I feel like we can avoid the ‘competitive” need to win or fight over that first “dating pool” hump. It either works or doesn’t, but many don’t like this idea because not a lot of people go naked to a first date. Most wear hard to penetrate jeans or baggy outfits to protect themselves. So in our 80’s attire wearing minds, even if one is themselves, what guarantees the other is? Nothing and I believe that is why it is frustrating. You go in as yourself and you hope the other person can be too. Is it incompatibility if one person isn’t able to get over the first date jitters? Is it incompatibility if one person is having a different perception that day? Should your potential match “date” like you date?
That’s why date two..three… four…are way more important than date one. You established a baseline and now you want to explore more. You start to dispel the “idea” of the person and see the person in front of you. You can start to “I miss you” with an actual representation than the innate need to want.
What if having such a large pool of people to “pick” from has made us numb to what is in front of us? I find a lot of dates end with a feeling of not even knowing if I should call or text more. Not knowing how to even approach a second date, sometimes this will even apply to date two and three. It isn’t because I feel disconnected from you, actually I am quite interested, and we seem to be having a great time together, but there is this weird nonchalant feeling to it. Complacency with first dates over the idea of seeing more. As if perhaps we have to act “cool” so not to mess with our busy lives or open up to hurt. I want to say “I would love to go out together on another “date” and perhaps see if you were interested as well, more than just “cool dude” but “hmm might make a nice boyfriend, eventually, maybe, perhaps, could be, worth checking out” “ without having to say it.
(last snippet taken from above entry, “do I really miss you?”)
I honestly can not deal with another bar. I want to meet when the sun is out or the rain is falling. I want to drink something that isn’t a form of courage and stumble through the everyday with you. Let’s just take a walk or go to a museum and for just that moment get lost in something other than our own lives, sharing, laughing, giving our phones a rest. In that we can be the unabated child we still feel like, stumbling upon words and not needing Google to answer questions we don’t know. Instead working together to create that day and let it have it’s own story, not an already created Facebook memory to go home to.
I believe finding yourself despite and in spite of societal infiltration is key to being 100% real, 100% authentic.
When it comes down to it, I need a challenge, not a game. One must be open to conversation and not afraid of debate as if it is confrontation. Laughter is a plus, even the awkward kind.
Let’s find a random place to lay down and cuddle within the first minutes enjoying the warmth and the affection as we stumble through the words. We can jump into a fountain before-hand if it is to warm. Perhaps we just meet extravagantly in front of the clock in Grand Central and kiss at the stroke of 12(pm I am an old man and need sleep!). Or maybe just kiss right as we meet so now we have a way to make the other shut up when talking too much. It doesn’t need a formula, it just needs a place and the people.
The most important thing to find in a another is someone who understands the risks of telling all, yet they do it anyway, because risk can kiss their ass.
To know that I go into everything in my life with a hopeful outlook even if I get frustrated and caught up by the heat of the moment. I am working on myself everyday even if it is difficult and I would hope you do too. Not because you are broken but because you truly just want to procrastinate stagnation.
I will be 100% responsible for my 50% of the relationship, will you?
I want to get to know someone, not based on finding the perfect outfit for a first date, and then canceling because you can’t, but on the person they are every day. I mean when they are old and I am sitting by them in a rocking chair yelling at the kids across the street or the fish in the ocean (depends on where we retire) do you think I give a shit what they wore the first time I met them? (although I will remember because I have a weird memory like that)
But it is more than that superficial part I am talking about. The real first impression, having to do with who you are, who you give off, and how your day has influenced your self at that given time.
The more first dates I go on the more I realize it is impossible to be the same “me” everytime. Sometimes I may be introspective, sometimes goofy, at times I may give off sophistication, and sometimes I just don’t want to tell you about my tattoo again. So for the person on the other end of that night, will that first impression be the “go to” moment of who I am or has social media and the “need” to stalk someone’s past after a date instead of the memory of the night just entertained, made it a moot point.
Will I no longer need to worry about that “changing schools” mentality because so much of me is engrained in an online memoir? Do those first moments slip from mind as the overwhelming amount of social media crams its way into the mind of those around you pushing out the present and consuming them with past?
Or will, as time and dates continue, my true self be a shock. As my personality progresses from one dimension to two dimensional with each encounter, does the person I met adapt or hold onto a memory of that first night when I fit the category of that specific mind set and personality associatively put forth by myself?
Someone said to me I was kinda a “smart dork”, the word smart never really registered as a descriptor I would use for self. People smart or worldy perhaps, but book smart… That would be new. But that night I knew so many random facts, I didn’t need google a damn thing haha. My mind flowed information that might make my LASIK surgery seem like a waste of money since I was being pictures with intellectual glasses on anyway.
So my thought is, does that first impression stick, as the personality we bring back into mind when shit goes wrong or things start to “change”. (Change being a poor choice of words, as it is more like the progression of pulling back the layers of someone impossible to summate in a first encounter) But do we want to live in that “first impression” to hear the songs playing or to feel the butterflies in the stomach?
Does each date, essentially boil down the rudimentary idea of changing schools. In one school you had years for people to “assume who you were”. But you change schools and you can, like a movie, reinvent your self. Eventually you, as a person comes out, but are people so used to a certain “first impression” that even that change will still be crowned with it, masking the quirks, the small bits, the layers. Will we be unable to truly see the person in front of us because our mind has, in some small way, subconsciously, fallen for that “first impression”. Yearning for it to be that simple, that complete, and not having to worry about time revealing more than we are willing to put in effort towards. Instant gratification through perception and projected assessments.
I suppose for me, recently finding love and then having it broken quicker than it was built, I can say over time it is beautiful what more impressions can do, how they can make you find the person more attractive, more exciting, more lovable. I think it is important to just put forward the face you can the day you meet, because then, no matter what, you are being who you can, and each day you continue to tell the truth, to your partner and yourself, allowing for the growth to be organic, beautiful, and comforting. To want that “first moment” back, is like asking for your virginity to be restored. Impossible, to say the least, but so much better the second time, or third, or when you truly understand and embrace a connection.
The evening started alone. Sitting at the table wanting to look busier than I was but being comfortable doing nothing all while being uncomfortable thinking I was perceived doing nothing by those around me. Holding my phone up to cast the cold, glow on my face, to let the world know I was not waiting alone, then being annoyed enough by the glow to put it down and just sit in silence, something I don’t often get a chance to do. Sure I will sit and not speak, but at a table, outside of work, outside of my comfort zone, surrounded by the voices of others. It felt like a droning silence and it was nice. The ladies next to me talking about their difficult day and me selfishly not having to worry about their burdens.
I flipped through the restaurants menu for a little to be sure I would make a good choice. The prices made my jaw drop. I can’t afford this, I can afford this, fuck why did I pick this place, knowing damn well I really wanted to eat here. Healthy organic goodness. A perfect meal for the night. But I am a starving artist, this will make a dent. Fuck it, too late now.
I went back to silence amongst the murmuring voices. Texting her to take her time, saying I had gotten a table, no rush. Words I would want to hear in the same situation. Easier to comfort others than yourself of course.
As I sat there in my thoughts, I was unable to figure out what we would talk about, 2 weeks had gone by since we last met, we could talk of work I suppose, but how long would that last. I had forgotten what we had talked about prior. Did my attempt at a goodnight kiss make this weird? I didn’t have to wait for that answer, that night got to a place where I could actually just speak my mind and ask if it was weird. Turns out it was all OK. No need to analyze. My explanation of my need to hear others thoughts giving her an insight to my intense observation to that around me. Understood.
When she arrived, we did talk about work for a bit, showing her a preview of my recent photos and actually explaining the reasoning was a ton of fun. No one else had seen it yet. She loved the photos I take with the dancers after each shoot, this ritual I do with those I shoot, where we pick the hardest pose off google and I attempt it with them, they being professional dancers and me having remedial skills from college. I made my joke saying someone would probably want those for a gallery versus the ones I put so much work into… but she saw I actually was honestly thinking of including it somehow and had some great suggestions. But she also understood those photos would not exist without the wonderful rapport I built with the dancers throughout the shoot.
These moments in my week where I get to go out and turn my phone on silent are captivating, yes I am talking about dating. To get away from the glow of a screen, the reminders of an email, the chime of a text. To just use my phone as a random fact check or to remember an example. When turning my phone face down makes me feel proud versus scared I will miss something important. In this case the important thing is right in front of me. It gives my mind a rest. Recently I was told, perhaps I wasn’t actually enjoying the moment and being myself but putting on an act of sorts (you can hear more of this in Convincing Explanations). Turns out when I am just me, it is amazing to be disconnected from the world. How much further can we get from nothing where even a cloud isn’t ethereal enough.
I don’t know if it was the lack of being rushed at the restaurant. The food. The lighting. The company. Or the stories I was telling but I had a sense of complete calm that night. In a flurry of both snow, which flurried outside the window and complete thoughts. I talked as myself, calmly, put together, zen. My passion for what I do came out. My voice calmed. I was in my head speaking my heart no fears in the world. Just enjoying the company of the person across from me.
Explaining my tattoo’s meaning without saying a word. Through my stories that night and my life it brought it to fruition, no need for a “story”. It gave it its true meaning. It brought the ink alive and made it meaningful. “The Fool” made more sense than anything I have ever written or said about it. Sometimes when I write something down I have trouble re-hashing it as a story, because I feel like I wrote it better than I could tell it. But my stories that night old or new had a new sense of excitement to them. Of course I started to become nervous and overwhelmed that I was telling a story irreplicable if this date failed and had to be retold to another, but it bringing me happiness in that moment, it made so much more sense and I brushed it off as a casualty of happiness. I can’t even write how I explained it, I would have to tell you every story in the exact same order. A once in a moment moment. 🙂
Sharing these deep moments and being given the chance to recall memories from the past few years that truly brought a smile to my face: directing, my dad, my life. It brought me comfort. It made me legitimately smile.
Being able to explain my life and not be judged on it but accepted for it or just listened to, with intent and interest. Not needing to know what was in her head, because she would tell me. No deep analysis needed. No multiple thoughts within a split second as preparation for what might be said next to head off any dragons or ogres. Not having the answers was just as rewarding as having them. I like not having to constantly make eye contact during a story because I know they are listening. I disarmed myself by not feeling the need to analyse emotions, eyes, shifting, body language, I was comfortable with myself.
I left on that cold night warm and content inside and out. As I write the daily life anxieties start to return but for those two hours I had complete calm and a sense of self. It was beautiful. No expectations, no wants, just enjoying being there. It was her partly her childlike approach to dating that calmed me. It made me feel safe. I didn’t have to talk about sex, pop culture, or entertain. I just got to be me. I could stumble my words, say the wrong thing, and pause to form the words or never figure them out. It all felt comforting. That night was a good night. She opened up to me in an extremely vulnerable way and we could still carry on. Her eyes told an amazingly deep story and through the pain a deep love for herself and those around her.
The snow falling outside the windows on this “spring” evening may have contributed slightly to the mood as it was calming and slightly romantic, knowing we wouldn’t have to endure a WINTER again.
I don’t know if it was friendship or more but right then it was nice. It feels calm. And I like calm. I like being me. I like explaining the different aspects of life I have had a part in. Many people ask me so when did you fall in love with Photography. To me this is a very difficult question to answer. I don’t think there was ever a point. I am interested in many many things so even calling myself a photographer is hard for me sometimes even though it takes up 99.9 percent of my day. Ha. I just really enjoy things where I can interact with people and help to achieve things with them. Help them in their lives and mine gets brighter. When a character I direct a person toward then bleeds into their actual life and contributes positively, I have to call that a good day. But I am not a one trick pony, I can make a mean sauce, salad dressing, dance, sing, photograph, edit, travel, smile, laugh, cry, be sarcastic, and so much more. She seemed to understand the different aspects and enjoyed taking them all in as a first impression for a second time versus a one time “this is how it is”.
We sat, we continued talking and sharing. The snow continued falling. The food eventually coming, the bill no longer on the forefront, but a worthwhile expense toward the experience we just shared. And the last call, as we ended the night as it began… But before that, before even walking out those restaurant doors, into the blustery snowy spring night…
I liked the mutual understanding of our choices versus the judgements. I liked the outcome to not matter. I liked the good food. And I liked sitting with this person, menus down, for a good half hour before ordering.
Just as an update, we are still friends on social media, I hope she sees this, as I don’t think I ever directly shared. But as for us, as a couple, it wasn’t really considered. That evening was our romance, our love, our relationship. That night was how we were meant to interact in the universe and give each other a reprieve from what can be an overwhelming world of dating let alone overwhelming world in general.
I used to believe there was this conscious effort that went into finding the right person quicker than others. I am not talking about meeting them and then getting to know each other, but through personal exploration, sense of self, cultural differences, there was a possibility to see fireworks/ hear music the first time you met. That to me seeing multiple people at once, I.E. “Dating”, was a waste of time where you could be learning the most you could about one person to see if it would work or not, then move on. Shoot like an arrow so to say.
Movies like 500 days of summer made me wince as she took on multiple relationships at once, mind you a very different and intense version of “dating” but one I figured was and is happening all around. People who are afraid to commit, so they just wait until enough time has passed where a decision is made for them on which side of the coin they choose versus flipping it.
But what I am realizing as I learn more about myself is that sometimes that first date is nothing even close to who we are regardless of how self aware we are. In my case, being hyper aware of my surroundings caused me to unintentionally act differently. Validating myself so the person across from me would accept me, putting our needs as whole to the side and worrying about what they thought. The simplest example is being unsure how to tell someone upon first meet “I don’t think this is going to work out” and remove myself from the situation, without becoming uncomfortable.
So now that I am becoming aware of what it is to be myself and to act myself, I can see that obviously others have to be going through the same thing. Then take that and multiply it by how far they have thought about it or how much effort they have put into themselves. So it is no longer me thinking that “giving all up front” is the key(although I believe being open is still important), but being able to “be consciously yourself upfront” is an important first step to getting to know someone.
My projections of how someone may date and the such apply to this newer idea as well. To just date 5 people at once is still weird in my head, but I understand it if you are going into it without an act and honestly just trying to let the organic nature of human interaction take its course. We really don’t know the other person on the other end of the relationship and won’t for quite some time. We may feel an attraction and it feels great, but knowing and feeling “happy” are so different.
You can bring in the talk of sex here but I think it goes beyond the physical. It is about the part of you that doesn’t need that sensation.
For me, I feel like my biggest step lately is just understanding, knowing I am struggling and constantly consciously working on being me on a date, that the other person is too. And regardless of the outcome, I am OK with it because I am being me. I can only bring myself to the table. I no longer have interested in “turning the tables”. By learning and applying that I myself become calm, collected, and meditative on what might otherwise be a struggled date through the above, it has made the simple act of breathing out in between sentences and stumbling over context or conversation a comfort and normal.
It feels wonderful when you are OK with it yourself and even better when the person with you accepts it as well. I think it benefits both people, it turns a “first date” best face forward, into a conversation between two people. It opens you up to stories, memories, and things that can bring you joy and intrigue. The two of us are laying the groundwork for a friendship.
I still believe in being an open book, but my book now has a cover to help let me close it and safely put it away, if I don’t want to read anymore or need a break. This helps to maintain that great crackling sound down the binding if I want to reopen it and let someone read more.
I find myself learning more and more about my securities and defenses. I often consider myself someone without walls, which is true to a point, but then I see an act, albeit a very sincere one, being played out in front of me at times. My own mouth the main actor.
For example, if I were to explain to you my ideas of how relationships work and sharing a lot of feelings up front with no reservation, I would give you a scenario about Europe, my childhood, the way of life there, and how I was raised. This gives you context but in a roundabout way of saying my unabated thoughts on the topic. By putting it in this context I have a third degree of separation removed from the idea that you may reject my ideals and the topic at hand. I have placed them into the context of my life instead of me, as a person, in that very moment I am saying it.
On the other hand, I could tell you I think sharing a lot right away is refreshing, a breath of fresh air, and the way I expect to see things; but there is a chance I get rejected from that idea or judged. While that judgement would be an accurate way for me to assess a relationship, in a deal breaker sense, I have created these “explanations” or “stories” that one would tell their boss on a sick day, instead of just saying “I don’t want to come in today, my work is done, I need a day off”. It beats around the truth in the way a Fool jests the truth, making it acceptable to be laughed off or listened to intently. I have found the “formula” for relaying my own beliefs so that the person in front of me can be “impressed” instead of judgemental. I have figured out how to pad myself from rejection or snap judgements. While I still think there is validity in doing it this way, so you don’t get thought of as the “clingy” or “over analytical” person, it doesn’t do much to help me find the person who accepts the things the way I see them in the long run. Later on, the person could dislike the same idea I just told them while we had our first drink as I set off the pyrotechnics with flashy dance numbers. The presentation may have impressed them, but it didn’t help them to assess it for themselves, thus not allowing my own assessment to be accurate.
I get afraid of people jumping to conclusions of who I am, what I like, and how I see the world, because it is true, I do think about shit intensely, I do have a lot to give right away, but I have been privileged to so many people jumping to the conclusion that, “it is too much too soon” or “all I have to give”, that I have searched for the long winded stories that accompany my feelings, thoughts, desires, and self. It is tiring to have to accompany what could be considered a yes or no answer with notation to read chapter 3 and 4 to truly understand the meaning.
I am pressed to write out that explanation right now, to tell anyone reading this that, spending time as a child in Zurich and abroad helped me to see interpersonal relationships in a different light, to feel more connected quickly, to not be disappointed if things didn’t work out, but to be happy to meet new people and form strong bonds, to not find boobs to be shocking but a natural way of life, to sit 1 inch too close because personal space is boring. To tell you about my friends in Denmark and France that I have stronger relationships than I have with anyone here over less time because we accepted one another based off very truthful, raw, moment conversations. To explain how on Sundays every store, gas station, business is shut down, forcing people to interact, go over to friends for dinner, converse, and just focus on the social aspects of life. Giving for one day, interpersonal relationships more importance that our careers and materialistic needs. But it doesn’t help me. It helps you. It helps you to either “accept” my explanation in that moment or it confuses you because you haven’t lived in that world, therefore you accept it as my “quirk” and consider it something you will learn more about overtime. But there is no more explanation overtime, my me, my “who I am” is the same right then, as it will be two months from then, as it will be with a boss, family member, best friend, and girlfriend.
So I am learning, I am growing, and ultimately I am becoming more comfortable being me.
My mother always told me to “wait, be patient, love would come to you”.
If and when I hear this today, I can’t help but think this is the furthest idea from the truth. Either it is my innate need to rebel against my mother’s advice or it is my sense of self being defined enough to know that the “Love will find you” is not the love I want. I do not strive for the staple white picket fence, mortgage, two kids, and flat screen TV 2 inches bigger than my neighbors. My white picket fence is not a place or a thing, it is a feeling, a way of being. My “hallmark family” is defined by how we live our lives and treat the world around us, not building up a literal and metaphysical wall to create a new world, isolated from the paved street filled with other’s also hiding in their own homes, feet from one another. My ideal love is able to live in the world in front of me, to be present for the ups and downs, and to feel everyday as intensely as the last.
The question I often struggle with is, how do you “find” love then? We seem to be OK with it “finding” us, but someone has to be doing the hunting. If it isn’t me, who is it? If your mother taught you the same thing, be patient, love will come to you, then aren’t we just in a form of stasis destined never to meet one another?
If you do run into a situation where there is a potential for love, should you grab it by the head or should you, like a child, pull its hair and run away giggling, in hopes that it got the clue? We often use words like “clingy” or “intense” to define those who show their true intentions up front when it comes to the topic. I come off as the little kid yelling “Mom, Mom Mom” still, but I’m just excited about most new things and people in my life. I find it to be a tricky tight rope to walk, not only for the other person and to not scare away the deer who heard the twig break, but to also keep your own guard and not get trampled by an idea of love. To keep the balance of self vs infatuation, letting it breath and grow naturally, but also adding wood to the stove before it burns out too quick.
Finding someone else regardless of the social constraints:
Who pays the bill
Who buys the first drink
When you split the bill
who sends the first message
Who txts first
Who calls first
Who says I love you first
What does it all really matter or mean in the long run?
In an organic situation you will find someone attractive and then subsequently judge them based on who they are. What you do in that moment is almost irrelevant, since if and when you decide one day to spend the rest of your lives together today is going to be a distant memory. You will remember feelings, looks, exchanges. You won’t remember the taste of the food or the price of the wine. Things change, jobs change, we change… but our connections grow and to grow together surpasses the social confines of a date.
We shouldn’t put so much pressure on the first impressions or circumstances rather than the person right in front of us. The thing that is most important.
So maybe that is the answer to “letting love find you”; allowing yourself to be open, vulnerable, and safe all at once, in the moment, with the person, regardless of the place, time, or everyday needs bestowed on you as a human being. Listening to them and them to you, letting go of your body to be yourself and actually see them and you in the full picture, before making a judgement or acting on an impulse. We don’t have to meet at the pinnacle of perfection we just have to meet. Then we have to be open to communication and understanding. Then if what ever interested us at our first “spark” is strong enough as we travel along our own life lines we will actually become two people who encourage and inspire one another.
I think for the rare few, maybe love will find them, but for the rest of us, it take’s work, not crunch your next deadline at your job work, but remembering their birthday work and making moments in time, by giving up some of your time, work.
Meet Tristan Pope, a passionate Emmy award winning Artist and ardent romantic. As the host of the podcast ‘Lost in Txtlation,’ Tristan delves into the complexities of love beyond mere words. Through open, stream-of-consciousness discussions, he explores online dating trends, relationships, compromise, and self-discovery. Each episode offers insights into the intricate puzzle of love, sparking conversations that guide listeners through toxic relationships, inspire self-appreciation, and create a sense of companionship on their journey.
Whether you seek relationship guidance or crave open conversations on love, ‘Lost in Txtlation’ invites you to explore the diverse facets of dating and relationships. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure through Tristan’s unabated, stream-of-consciousness journal. Feel free to skip around or ask questions through the Q/A section. Tristan’s writing is an open discussion, embracing different perspectives and colors of the grass. Join the conversation and share your thoughts with Tristan, as he listens and engages with the ever-evolving narrative of love.
A journal entry to himself with the intent of others reading it. Feel free to get lost eating each of the breadcrumbs he left behind for his depreciating mind.
