Dating and other catastrophes

This Washington Post essay has almost scared me away from ALL dating, let alone Internet dating (which I still haven't tried just yet). "If you don't receive flowers by the fourth date, dump him." WTF? No no no no no. And believe me, I get that this woman has been through tough times, so have I, as I wound up pouring out to my friend on the train last night (and to this blog). But there is no one size fits all rule that men or women should follow that will work for everyone. Me? Rather than flowers which will wither and die and need to be thrown out of my apartment, I'd rather someone make me laugh. Not from a cheesy joke or practiced line or lame come-on but just from being themselves. From teasing me in all my quirks, from actual life experience and personality. Say something that I will remember even if things don't work out between us. Tell me something I have never heard before. Those things are way more valuable to me than flowers or any of the things I feel like we're "supposed" to want. More and more I realize that I don't have hard and fast rules for the "type" of person I want to meet, and I don't just mean that in terms of looks. I mean that there are so many unknown factors, and we're all unique, and that's the part that I'm looking for from someone I date, the part that I can't name on a checklist, the part that I don't know in advance, the part that in a million years I'd never identify as being the trait of someone I'd want to date, until I meet that person. I'm still figuring out who I am and feel so ready to make major life changes. Maybe not right this second, but in a year or two. Maybe I'll want to leave my beloved New York or open a bakery or who knows what. I don't know and that unknown, mysterious factor is what keeps me from not being too cynical.

But making it sound like it's only women who get the short end of the dating stick, so to speak, only serves to further alienate men and women. I would imagine that all the same opportunities to utilize Match or whatever service for honest or dishonest purpose are available to women too. I think it's hard enough to be single and trying to communicate honestly and openly with people without all these walls we put up, and there I'm talking about myself as much as this author. Of course it's hard not to be cynical when this, that and the other thing has happened to you but...if you go into every dating situation thinking your date could very well be like the total jerk you dated before, I don't know, but that doesn't seem like a very positive approach. I hate hate hate the mindset that assumes that what's happened before will happen again. Try reading this woman's blog for some perspective.

I will say that for me, as down as I can get about it, I can easily be brought back into myself by the prospect of meeting somoene new and real and, to me probably the greatest quality of all, unique. Unique as in unforgettable because the fact is, I've dated people who are so forgettable I've pretty much forgotten about them. It's not that I magically forget about everyone that's come before but at the end of the day, I have to ask myself what holding onto all that anger is doing...to me. Not to anyone else but to me, how it's affecting my day-to-day mindset, why I'm still caring about something that's actually ancient history. I don't want to approach a potential new relationship with my heart so sealed off I am only presenting part of myself. Even when I've tried to do that, it just doesn't work. I'm either there, fully engaged, or I'm not. And as risky as the former is, the latter just isn't worth it to me.

Even for the people who've broken my heart, I think almost worse than that would be this mindset of treating every woman (or man) exactly the same as you did the last one. Maybe some people can do that, but I can't. But I think this is a sympton of the ways women especially are so suspicious of men when it comes to dating. Example A: Don't Date Him Girl. (Which I won't link to directly but is quite easy to find. And apparently I haven't really kept up with all the press on, because I was quoted in this Miami New Times article about the site.) I had planned to revisit this issue with the Voice but do not worry, I will at some point, though by now I think that mindset and that site in particular have become so entrenched, despite the lawsuit against them and the many voices protesting its validity and usefulness, that it's not going away. But lesson to Tasha Joseph, to me at my worst moments, and to anyone else who thinks the internet is this vast wasteland of vitriol and schadenfreude: lashing out in anger because of something someone wrote about you, and doing so in a public forum, may not the best option. Yes, I've done it, but I find it interesting that those remarks she made about me on her blog do live on. They don't really bother me on a personal level because I stand by what I wrote but is another lesson to me in channeling one's anger into productivity rather than into simple vindictiveness.

That's not to say I don't have those urges. For instance, I know who S. dated before me and I would love to call her up and bitch about him but a) I think that'd make me look crazy since we don't even live in the same city, and really, she's probably long over him, as I should be and am well on my way to being, and b) I actually always thought she sounded like a really fascinating person, so if our paths ever do cross, why tarnish any potential friendship with that? I feel like the DDHG people made it sound like I didn't understand the impulse behind wanting that kind of revenge and my answer is of course I do. But that doesn't make it right, fair, or even logical.

Check out what Virginia Vitzthum had to say (I found the WaPo essay from her link)