WotWentWrong

Not being remotely religious, one of the ten commandments may seem like a strange place to extract dating advice, however, the issue of idolatry has to be one of the most plaguing factors in our dating dilemmas. Some worship idols, some find themselves being worshipped, and there are some who simple can’t cope without their pedestal.

Charlie had a pattern that was driving her crazy.  Throughout her life, she had poured blood, sweat, tears and toil into the pursuit of unattainable men.  Whether they be attached men, ambiguous men, addicts, tortured souls unable to sustain a relationship if their lives depended on it, or even celebrities, these were the guys that drove her to distraction.  The men she fruitlessly pursued, though flattered at her idolatry, and pleased to have been put on a pedestal, at the end of the day, couldn’t see her unless they looked down.  She desperately wanted to meet the guy that would sweep her off her feet, yet she would nonchalantly stroll on past the line of interested men at her doorstep, in favour of chasing rainbows. A self defeating prophecy by any standards, and one that was driving her self confidence to the ground she was failing to kept her feet on.

It took Charlie a string of heartbreaks (along with a teenage realisation that it wasn’t going to happen with Johnny Depp) to face the fact that she had developed a mentality that dictated, if you have to bust a gut to attain it, it must be highly valuable.  You got the impression that if any of these men actually became available to her, these idols would soon lose their glittering gold shimmer (OK, maybe not Johnny Depp) and look like base metal. Her epiphany relationship came when she met Josh.  Clearly interested in her, but not forthright enough to have her clasping for her running shoes, and highly forgiving of her initial signs of disinterest, slowly but surely, with him, Charlie decided to face what actually turned out be her fear, her fear of actual real intimacy with an available guy. And this was the turning point that led to Charlie’s relocation to reality.

When we adopt the Indiana Jones dating strategy of making an adventure out of pursuing hard won goals, do we choose the chase over the relationship?  Are we in essence choosing to run towards something, because it hides the fact that we are running away from something else?  That something else being a real, mutually fulfilling, risk taking, vulnerability exposing relationship.

“Do I Look Fat in This?”

Now that’s a question that irked my friend, Adam; a question that was posed by his girlfriend, Jill.  Jill is a beautiful woman, inside and out, and Adam adores her.  But Jill is convinced she looks terrible on a regular basis.

Jill’s routine goes as follows:

• Jill gets dolled up for a night out, with flawless makeup, curly hair, and a dress that would make Carrie Bradshaw proud.
• Jill looks at Adam and says, “Do I look fat in this? My thighs/butt/stomach is/are huge!”
• Adam shakes his head and tells her she looks beautiful.
• Jill changes anyway and spends the rest of the night talking about how she needs to lose weight or change something about her looks.

The thing is, Adam is perfectly cool with her body, and in fact, thinks she always looks great.

Contrary to popular belief, “Do I look fat in this?” is not the phrase men loathe to hear.  The answer to that one isn’t as complicated as a mediocre sitcom makes it out to be: “You look good” will suffice, or even a “It looks fine, but I love you in this other outfit.”
Or, as Ross says in this “Friends” episode: “You don’t look. You just say ‘No.’”

http://youtu.be/emHSO5dr6dk

No, the real thing that drives men up the relationship wall isn’t the question. It’s the implication.  What really gets under Adam’s skin is spending so much time trying to convince someone they look fine only to have them dismiss it.

When a man hears “Do I look fat in this?” again and again, he’s really hearing a woman who doesn’t believe him when he says she’s beautiful.

A lack of self-confidence is a kind of hidden killer of relationships, because it’s not as obvious as being terrible in bed, a lack of chemistry or relationship baggage from an ex.  It simmers like a stew – a stew that tastes great but thinks it tastes bland.  It’s one thing to casually ask how you look. It’s another to not take a guy at his word and make him be your own personal pep squad.

Adam told me he always felt like he was dealing with her confidence issues and never about anything he was worried about.  Eventually, he decided he didn’t want to spend his nights telling someone something they’d never accept.  Have you ever been the one who felt like you weren’t hot enough for your partner, and needed them to support you? Did you ever get to the point where you believed them?  Or were you on the other end, and got tired of validating all the time?

Carrie was smitten.  Ever since she clapped eyes on Cory, she felt her stomach churn into a fluttering butterfly zoo.  She had never felt such instant attraction.  The bassist in a band, Cory was a touring free spirit. He emanated fun, youth and excitement.  And to further amp up the electricity, the sexual chem was clearly a two sided current. However, they had two very different styles of relating to the opposite sex. Cory lived in the moment. The concept of tomorrow never really occurred to him. Carrie on the other hand, though attracted to his libertarian ways, wanted the security of a relationship. But she knew an outright declaration of this would scare him away.

She decided to orchestrate a sleight of hand.  She decided that if she could go along with the casual for long enough, sleep with him, they would naturally bond, and he would arrive at the realisation that she was the one for him.  Each morning, after tossing her hair nonchalantly into a ponytail and strolling airily out of his apartment, Carrie edged nearer to   the realisation that her plan wasn’t really working. From his end there had been no, “do you have to leave?”, “stay for breakfast” or “so, what shall we do for Valentine’s Day?” Eventually, the situation started to chip away at her ego, her insecurities snowballed and she decided to abandon her reverse psychology stance and ask, “where is this going?” She was met with a stunned silence, followed by a “I thought we were cool as we were? I’m not really looking for a girlfriend.”

Carrie felt cheated. She had put her own needs onto the back burner, compromised her comfort levels, and this was all she got in return. After a few rounds of punching her pillow, and three or four viewings of John Tucker Must Die, Carrie had to admit to herself that her rage at him was actually rage at herself.  She had operated from a hidden agenda, and rather than make her needs clear, she had catered to his needs in the hope that he would, in turn, fulfil hers. A bargain he had no part in negotiating.

Do we shy away from declaring our desire for a potential relationship because we fear being rejected for it? Are we afraid to let go of crumbs because we know deep down there was never a loaf to be had? Or is it the fear that if we state our needs clearly, we’ll be left with only men that actually want a relationship, which means the even scarier possibility of actually having one?

Caitlin was mortified.  The reason?  The guy she had been seeing for the past few months had tarred her with the one of dating’s more humiliating brushes. She had been tarred as needy.  Over breakfast, we all bit on our fists as we prepared ourselves for the embarrassing story to unfold.  Preparing for a tale of Fatal Attraction proportions, we all feared the worst.  What came was slightly anti climactic.  “I asked him if he was still seeing other women”.  Oh. “He told me to stop being so needy”.  Hmm. “I think I blew it”.  Right. Was it my imagination or was Caitlin’s question to her beau residing in the field of …. perfectly rational?

Neediness, in both men and women, as a characteristic, is a well known source of ridicule, embarrassment and fear:

Feeling like you have to constantly be there to prop someone else’s ego up is draining at the best of times, and we have all borne witness to incidents of partners carpet bombing their wearier halves with texts, emails, phone calls, pigeons and every other form of communication at one’s disposal.  But is asking whether a relationship is exclusive or not a needy crime?  Is asking whether someone is looking for a potential relationship a needy crime? Is expecting someone to be interested in the potential of a relationship before you sleep with them a needy crime?  More than once I’ve heard people use the phrase, “Don’t worry.  I’m not expecting a relationship” as if to ease the other person’s mind, or to appear uber cool, and low maintenance. I’ve felt that pressure myself, and realised that not honouring my needs, even if they’re at odds with the other person’s, has never led to anything other than heartache.

My cousin Martin threw another perspective into the mix.  He announced that if he felt his wife Sue didn’t need him, the relationship would fall apart. Even in such simple terms as fixing a fence, or massaging her stresses away, all these things made Martin feel needed, and like The Don in his world.

It could be that we have an overactive pride-o-meter, but being branded ‘needy’ can produce heart palpitations of shame. And both sides of the gender fence can attest to the fact that feeling responsible for someone else’s self esteem can turn the attraction stakes to Power Level 0. However, is the word needy too often used to fend off the fact that sometimes men and women have perfectly reasonable, perfectly understandable, and perfectly natural needs?

Theresa was drowning in regret. The man who invaded her dreams, the man who had induced in her multiple inner swoons as soon as she clapped eyes on him, the man unlike any other male creature walking the Earth had turned out to be a sleazy, non calling the next day player.  Ouch. Double ouch when she realised she was one of many ‘victims’, and he had in fact seduced two of our other friends the same week.  Triple ouch that she had tried to send a friendly text only to be greeted with stone walled silence, and quadruple ouch when she came to hear how his friends had been treated to every single detail. “I wish I could turn back the clocks” she lamented. “I’m just a number”. As I considered and related to her cringe factor, it got me thinking, there wasn’t one of our group of friends who hadn’t, at some point, suffered at the hands of a creep ridden player.  However, were any of us ‘victims’? I looked around the room, and thought, despite the occasional bout of misjudged idiocy, we were a pretty rock solid bunch.

Recently airing was web based comedy “Dating Rules From My Future Self”, which features a girl who receives advice from the future, via text, to stop her from making mistakes in her love life.

It got me thinking, would I rather cringe about something I had done, or regret something I hadn’t? I asked myself, if I was given the option to improve my love life by heeding warning texts from my future self, would I opt to receive these nuggets of foresight? After much debate, I’d like to think the answer would have to be no. I would rather not know and experience the full on cringe. And that includes incidents high on the cringe richter scale, such as the love letter I sent to my teacher, and being rejected by my piano teacher, and still having to take lessons. Looking back, there isn’t a single dating mistake I can recount that hasn’t in the long run improved my judgement when it comes to future relationships.

Theresa’s experience happened in college.  Since then, she met and married a wonderful man, who wasn’t the alpha, hunter type she used to go for, but the open, sensitive type who made a great husband, and fantastic Dad to their two year old daughter. I wonder if close encounters with the wrong kind is necessary to re-jigging our tastes in men, and preparing us to embrace the kind of men that actually deserve a place in our future.

It used to be so simple. Painful, of course, but simple at least. He sent his buddy to break up with you (if you were in grade school), or he did it over the phone. Now the possibilities for breakups are almost endless. IM, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Text, Email… It seems the more connected we are these days, the easier it is to avoid the uncomfortable breakup by hiding behind these technologies.

Drew Barrymore said it best.

Men and women alike are using these technologies to send the message “I’m just not that into you!” But have we gone too far? Are we eroding all sense of courtesy and responsibility by employing these tactics?

I had a friend who was de-friended on Facebook – that was the first inkling he had that she wasn’t seeing him anymore. Ouch. But perhaps it says more about her than it does him. They had been seeing other for about 6 weeks. Surely she could have braved a conversation, or perhaps a less cowardly text message. Wow. I never thought I’d hear myself say that a text message is less cowardly.

Facebook leads to the demise of countless relationships. Pictures, status updates and wall posts from the wrong person can lead to jealousy and lack of trust. Like my friend, it’s even possible to find out you’ve been dumped just by logging onto Facebook! A text is bad, but breaking up with someone on a social network – that’s like making an announcement about it to everyone you know. It’s humiliating! Not to mention you were probably the last to know.

Will we get to a point where I will think a Facebook de-friend is preferable to something else? Where does the degradation end?

For anyone who watched last season of the Bachelor, I’m sure you remember runner-up, Lindzi Cox. On the show, Lindzi shared with viewers that prior to coming on the Bachelor, she was dumped by a text message sent by her (now ex) boyfriend of about a year! The text read: “Welcome to Dumpsville…population YOU!” Lindzi said that the Dumpsville text was worse than being dumped on national TV.

It’s not about the method of technology used (they’re all bad), but the message being sent. Using technology to breakup with someone is like saying ‘our relationship meant nothing to me, so little in fact it’s not worth my time to talk about it, so I’m going to send you a one sentence text and then move on with my life.’ It’s harsh, I know.

When technology is used to end a relationship, there is no sense of closure. Julia, a friend of mine, was dumped via text message. She called her ex to try and get some answers, but he labeled her as a stalker and told all of his friends she was crazy.  She’s not crazy; she just wanted a straightforward answer. To this day she doesn’t understand what went wrong in that relationship.

It’s common courtesy people!  Breakups are uncomfortable, awkward and painful for everyone involved, but having an adult conversation is still the best way to do it. With a deep breath and little bit of confidence (and maybe some rehearsing) you’ll get through it. In the end, you’ll still have your dignity and your ex will— in time, respect you for it.

Having had a string of dates that involved each man attempting to launch their way into her pants before she could say, “Yes, I would like to look at the dessert menu”, Tori was fed up of searching for a relationship match, only to find herself at the end of each date batting off a very persistent offer of coming up for coffee. Either these men were seriously addicted to caffeine, or their prime goal for the evening was to score a roll in the hay. As much as she’d like to believe the former, she was realistic enough to know the answer was invariably the latter. “Where the hell is chivalry?” She would lament to us. “Have any of these men even heard of Jane Austen?” It took one more walk home that included an overly enthusiastic offer of coffee for Tori to declare “I am now a nun (minus the habit, praying, or having any kind of religious belief).”

Two weeks after her half-hearted declaration of celibacy, she met Shane. Shane had the answer to her (if she’d been praying) prayers. Chivalrous, reserved and sporting the manners of a Victorian butler, at the end of their first date, instead of the usual offer of coffee, Shane asked her to text him to let her know she got home OK. Tori was enamoured. Who is this incarnation of Mr Darcy? By the third date, Shane hadn’t even asked for a kiss. He was kind, courteous and considerate. This one had staying power.

A few weeks later, we caught up with Tori over drinks, and she declared that their 10th date had gone by and though they had now kissed, Shane still hadn’t invited her back to his place. Her enthusiasm was wearing noticeably thin. “I think we’ve missed the window. Maybe he doesn’t find me attractive enough to sleep with! Do you think he just sees me as a friend?” Reaching the stage where she was now actually entertaining the thought of inviting him in for coffee herself, Tori realised that she didn’t want to have to seduce him. She wanted the man to take the lead.

Is there a balance to be struck between sleazy and chivalrous? Are we simply asking for the best of both worlds? Or is it as my grandmother once declared: “It’s for men to try, women to deny”?

Girlfriend, partner, wife, friend, dating, seeing, hanging with, fooling with, banging (not a favourite); these are all labels that mean different things to different people, but that said, how much do we need these labels, what do they mean and what do they broadcast to the outside world?

From a street voxpop in Toronto, it appears “dating” and “seeing” represent two very different levels of commitment:

My house mate Ray had been seeing Sarah for four months.  They had met each other’s parents, were in a physical relationship and saw each other every weekend.  So, when I referred to Sarah as his girlfriend one day I was surprised to hear Ray protest, “She’s not my girlfriend! We’re not there yet. We’ve only been seeing each other four months”.  When I expressed my surprise, Todd, my other house mate chipped in, “Some people just don’t like to put labels on things”.  Fair enough, but I couldn’t help but wonder if his unwillingness to label was less related to a belief against categorising human relationships, and more about his unwillingness to commit to a certain relationship. If love is in the air, don’t these labels ward off any potential rival suitor shaped threats? By nature, humans are territorial, and as peeing a circle around our partner is not socially acceptable, isn’t simply labelling them as our other halves doing an equal, and cleaner job? I had my reservations about Todd’s theory.

My inclinations appeared to be confirmed a few weeks later when Sarah and Ray broke up following a talk, which led to Sarah asking Ray to confirm the status of the relationship. Were they girlfriend and boyfriend, or casually dating? She asked.  Ray expressed his reluctance to label their relationship, and so Sarah broke it off. On hearing of this, Todd piped up once more.  “She shouldn’t have put pressure on him to label it. This labelling business will always kill a relationship”. Was he right? Was labelling the issue here, or was Sarah picking up on an imbalance in the relationship and wisely opting to save time and cut her losses? After four months, isn’t refusing to put a label on it a label in itself?  A label that says “uncommitted, hence no label”?

When we avoid labelling, are we waiting to find out more about what’s in the pot before we assign a label, or simply uncomfortable with what the label might say?

Mel was dating a magician … of sorts. Every now and then her boyfriend Greg would vanish into thin air. Unreachable by phone, email or via door bell, Greg would literally disappear. As much as three weeks would go by before Greg would ‘ta da’ back into existence, and like all good magicians, he would never reveal his tricks, and offer very little explanation. Having investigated ‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’, Mel figured he was just disappearing to his cave, as all men do from time to time. It just happened to be a very big cave, very far away, and with very little phone signal. Like all magic tricks, repeated a few too many times, they become tedious. Tired of having her self esteem chipped away by his Houdini routine, Mel decided this time she would be the one to disappear, and the ticket to her cave was one way.

Greg’s tricks had left a dent in her trust, and fearful of the prospect of meeting another vanishing act, she took some time to wonder whether there were any signals from the outset to suggest he might be this kind of guy, signals to look out for in future dates. She didn’t think so. Greg jumped into their relationship with both feet, professing his investment from very early on. She had very little reason to doubt that this wasn’t love at first sight. According to Marni Battista and Christian Anderson, perhaps this was exactly the problem:

Mel eventually realised that having constructed a mountain of expectation from the outset, Greg had put himself under a ridiculous amount of pressure, under which he was apt to bolt. He was also more invested in fantasy than reality, and in short, a poor candidate for a relationship. If she had seen through the hazy smoke of fresh infatuation, there had been signs all along.

A generation bred on romcoms, where handsome protagonists waltz into our lives and sweep us off our feet, are we subject to buying into these fantasies too? An interested party professing love at first sight can be intoxicating, mesmerising and make floating off the grounds of Planet Reality near impossible to resist. But is insisting on slowing the pace, keeping perspective in the picture, and our objective wits about us the only means by which we can spot a magician before he saws our self esteem in half?

My usual preference for first dates is to meet for a nice meal, but having compromised my dignity on a previous date in a spinach-related incident, I decided to suggest just drinks instead. My new date Eric agreed and we met at a trendy bar in the centre of town, where we experimented with cheap happy hour cocktails.

My first impression was that he wasn’t my usual type. But I decided to heed the preachings of my bossy best friend and keep an open mind. It wasn’t easy. Struggling to find common ground, I found myself disappearing to the toilet to think up areas of conversation, an activity that did not exclude whipping out my Smartphone and Googling ‘Areas of Conversation’.

My last resort was filling silences by taking long sips of my drinks. With a mouthful of liquid I would have a practical reason for not speaking and maybe a touch of Dutch courage would loosen up my inhibitions and kick start the flow in conversation. Alcohol worked. A few drinks in, we relaxed, and his bookish librarian-esque demeanor became less Bill Gates, and more Hugh Grant. The stilted start had turned to reckless giggling, shrill banter and the rest, well, I have a vague image of a slurpy goodnight kiss aimed in the vague direction of each other’s mouths, and stumbling into separate taxis, but not much else.

The next day was accompanied by the hangover from hell. When my friends launched into the traditional, “Well?? How did it go??” inquisition, I blinked a few times, referred to my filing cabinet of short term memories, and found it locked. My mind had drawn a decisive blank. “I honestly don’t know” was the only answer I could pathetically muster. My memory of the evening was a complete blur, and was playing out in my head as if it had taken place on a speeding merry-go-round.

Taking my version of a Sherlock Holmes approach, I deduced that if the date had been on a Wednesday and lasted till two in the morning, without any excuses being made to leave, some kind of rapport had to have been present between us in the bar that night. So, when Eric texted to arrange our next date, I took a there-is-no-reason-that-my-brain-has-retained-to-say-no stance and agreed. I’d decided, as an apology to my liver, to keep this date a sober affair. We decided on a coffee date, and lest I suffer a caffeine overdose, I decided to resist the sip-to-fill-the-silences technique.

As soon as the date started, beyond the polite “weren’t we crazy the other night?” exchange, I realised we were struggling for things to say. I noticed our eyes would intermittently wander towards the clock. When scraping the bottom of the conversation barrel produced a discussion about different varieties of bread, I knew the curtains were falling on our potential match. Two Americanos and a less than steamy debate on the decline of local housing prices later, we bid farewell, him taking a perception of me as, at my best, boring, at my worst, slurring, and I taking with me a lesson never again to assess a date through rose-coloured beer goggles.