Smart Girls Get Jealous

May 7, 2007

I am starting to think that smart girls get do get jealous. I first got this idea when I read a Necrofile article by satirist Donna Lypchuk several years ago about jealousy and survival of the fittest and now I have also stumbled across a professional opinion by Dr. Irving Walkoff – a psychiatrist based in Toronto.

Apparently when you feel those feelings of jealousy descend the more homicidal they are the healthier you are. This is because what you are really thinking about is not really the other woman or how he is betraying you but really – the next seven generations of unborn descendants. In other words, we are hardwired to get mad at anything that threatens our sexual life as the original intention of sex was to procreate. If anyone gets in the way of that procreation – we don’t survive.

Nobody escapes jealousy. It is a natural human reaction that finds its basis in evolutionary biology. It is a part of Mother Nature and has a biological basis. You find displays of jealousy in any animal species that tends to form pairs. The tendency towards jealousy is right in your DNA. Essentially, you choose a partner because you want their DNA to be attached to your DNA. The roots of this are ancient and Darwinian —part of “the survival of the fittest.”

Jealousy is also related to anxiety. Walkoff sees this anxiety as being somewhat good …”it propels us to propagate the species … hurry up and get on with it! It is also about protecting the nest”

Envy, which is a little lighter than jealousy also comes into play in most relationships. Rock describes envy as being “the frustrated longing for other’s experience. It is a different, more superficial phenomenon than jealousy. You want to be the person as opposed to be the person who is desired.

When somebody else threatens your relationship, you start seeing the meddler as somehow better than you — the assumption is that they are better at adaptation, better at seduction, a better parent … in short are more fit to continue the species than you … this triggers a fight or flight response in many people. Jealousy is there to protect you and your DNA — the desire to pass on your DNA.

Walkoff claims that “a little bit of jealousy can be a good thing. In a healthy relationship, the subject can be discussed between both partners. Often, in the end, both partners feel secretly satisfied, as the jealousy is evidence that the relationship is still alive and kicking. Love is killed by indifference — not necessarily jealousy. Jealousy becomes pathological when one does not allow the other partner to live a normal life.”

It might be perfectly natural to experience jealousy, but in most religions, this emotion is still considered to be ugly and morally repugnant. Maybe it might be a good idea for a guy not to cause an occasion for jealousy in the first place!

 

Dating Journal
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Sharing Too Much!

May 6, 2007

I think I have just been a victim of STM, otherwise known as Sharing Too Much.

It used to be that one could get to know someone else by asking ” what kind of movies do you like?” or “what kind of books do you read?” I’ve noticed that lately it is perfectly acceptable to just ask someone “what kind of vibrator do you use?” or “How many hundreds of dollars do you owe on your credit card?” This used to be the kind of thing that was never polite company according to my mom and dad who can’t believe how candid my generation is …

I suppose all of this honesty is due to the long-term effect of watching shows like Seinfeld and Friends where the hippest characters always have something to confess of a personal nature. Also did you just see that cover of Nylon with Lindsay Lohan on the cover where she is covering her mouth and saying “ Sometimes, I say too much …” It is cool to come out with it all and perhaps even say too much. I guess we share too much to seem quirky an interesting to other people.

My mom was also telling me that when she was younger it was also a lot more unusual to hear a girl say something like “I have to pee.” She would say I have to go to the bathroom or excuse me but not use words that refer to any kind of act of excretion. A euphemism was always used such as “I have to powder my nose.”

I just went out with a guy with a bad case of Sharing Too Much who tried to impress me by telling me a ton of little quirky details about himself. Instead I ended up being completely grossed out. He told me all sorts of little things that I guess were to make me think of him as being more interesting but that actually turned me off. For instance I am not that impressed with a guy who confesses that he must open the medicine cabinet in the bathroom when he visits someone – it makes me want to put a padlock on mine. At one point after he complimented my make up he also told me about the time he put mascara on his lashes to see how long he could get them. Too much information Mr. Future Drag Queen of the New Century! Then he started telling me all about all of the root canal work that he had done and the temporary bridges he had put in and then he started demonstrating how he had difficulty in flossing in some places. All of this was much too personal for me. Sometimes when you are getting to know someone you can get to know them too much! What is it that my Dad always said – “familiarity breeds contempt”. Or was it “familiarity breeds consent?” I can’t remember.

 

Dating Journal

Never Call Him First

May 5, 2007

If there is one thing that I have learned so far in my brief few years as a serial dater it is “Never ever call him first.” This is a law of dating that should apply to single women everywhere. You call him first, you are dead in the water.

I know it sounds really old fashioned and not too feminist but unfortunately it is true. From what I can tell, relationships that start off with the woman calling the man always lead to some kind of disaster or humiliation.

This is the typical scenario. A woman meets a cute guy an in a bar. They talk for two hours straight. The woman starts thinking, “Oh, he really likes me.” Before she knows it the hours have flown by, it is Last Call and it is time to go home. He is putting on his coat, and she has either one of two options –

1. To never see him again in her life.

2. To get his number.

This is exactly how these catastrophic affairs start. You should never ask the man for his number. This is because if unless he volunteers it, you will probably always get an answering machine or even a female voice that says “Just a minute. I’ll get him.”

It is also pretty humiliating when you leave that one message and the guy never calls you back, even after weeks have passed when at the bar he was more than willing to tell you almost too much about himself.

Most of the time you get an answering machine. The worst thing you can do is leave one of those “burned” sounding messages after he hasn’t returned your message after about three weeks. The point here is that if he wanted to call, he would and that if he wanted to call he would have asked for your number in the first place.

This begs the question – why do men go on and on about themselves to complete strangers in the first place? It is because most men don’t see women as anything but soft places to lay their heads in the first place. You are a nurturer, just like his mom, and of course there is nothing you would be more grateful for then to listen to his life story.

Still most women don’t seem to realize that most men like to just ramble on about themselves with no interest in you. Like some types of alpha dogs they like the sound of their voice.

There is also the slight danger that the guy that you were talking to is one of the old-fashioned control freak types who were raised by a Michael Douglas type Dad. This type believes that the minute you ask for the number, never mind phone, that you are automatically a stalker.

If you simply make it one of your Golden Rules that you will never ask for his number then you will never be put through this kind of pain. There is a lot of peace in knowing that the guy who is calling you really does want to call and and you know this is so because he asked for YOUR number. Not the other way around.

 

Dating Journal
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When Old Dudes Pretend to Be Young

May 4, 2007

I was just surfing a very well known online dating site here as I sit here in my one bedroom condo overlooking the beach in Florida and I just could not believe the number of older guys on there masquerading as young men in the age 20-30 category. This is what happens …

You start browsing and everything seems normal. You see the usual stereotypes — the Tolkien fan with the little goatee on his chin, the Word Nerd squinting with contact lenses on and the jock with a bottle of beer in his hand. You also see guys in their 30s in the age 20-30 category including the bald Michael Stipe look a likes (only with pointier ears and weird shaped heads) and the Peter Pans wearing Borat t-shirts. Having a few guys in their thirties faking out a profile in the 20 to 30 is not so bad.

What I am really complaining about is the guys who are obviously in their late forties to fifties and who are trying pick up young woman like me online. Some of them must really think we are stupid. There are guys on here that could pass for Shar-Pei dogs their faces are so wrinkled. What do they think us girls are thinking – that they forgot to use a little sunscreen one day?

Then there is the way they dress. Most of them are aware that us young chicks like groovy seventies clothes but somehow when these guys don the look they end up looking more like Austin Powers then some cute singer from Scotland.

Also astounding is the number of youth building props that some of these older guys will surround themselves with in order to convince us they are metabolically not so degraded. There is always the guy wearing a lot of gold chains, which unfortunately at his age makes him look less like a rapper and more like my grandma. Many like to pose themselves with a recent model sportscar. One picture I see here shows the guy standing behind his red Ferrari so we can’t see the lower half of his body. Perhaps this is to conceal the fact that he leaning on a cane.

Yet another thing that bothers me is that many of these profiles have not uploaded what looks like a recent photo. Some people who post their photos seem to be posting photographs that look like they are from a high school year book – from 1980. The dead give away is the permed afros, wide ties and brown and orange shirts.

The fact that it is truly hard to find someone that seem truly to be within my own age bracket online is strongly discouraging me from going there. After all who feels like telling grandpa he is too old once you meet him in person? The sad thing about all this too is that probably more than half are married and have daughters that are my age. What a turn on!

 

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