Thanks for the Time of My Life!

May 15, 2007

By now I should have learned not to trust my gut instincts when it comes to “love at first sight”. However I will never learn as obviously my judgment is way completely distorted by hormones. Oops, I did it again– I chose absolutely the wrong guy to become smitten with–

Our story starts about a month ago when I met this guy in a coffee shop. He was really, and seemed smart as a whip. After a few weeks we sort of fell into a routine where I would stop by at a certain time, to see if he was there …and he always would be. He would be sitting there, giving me the sweetest looks as he looked up from his notebook where he was always furiously writing. “Ah” I thought, “He’s deep! He’s another writer!”

After several more “accidental on purpose” meetings in the coffee shop he finally asked me out on what I thought was going to be a date. He told me he was going to take me some place really really special and that it was going to blow my mind. He guaranteed me that my life would be completely changed after this date.

He also told me how special I was because he found it hard to “trust” and that he was going to take me to a place where he had never taken a girl before.

So I got all dressed up, thinking we were going to some special romantic spot where he would confess his devotion to me somehow or at least say, “Hey do you want to go steady.”

He picks me up and the next thing I know we are driving into the parking lot a church and I’m thinking “well, maybe he’s really into architecture.” Next thing after that I know we are in a room filled with chairs and my date is sitting in a circle with the rest of them with a big smile on his face saying, “My name is Steven and I am an alcoholic.”

When it came my turn to speak, and I dared to say that I wasn’t an alcoholic, they all frowned and looked at me strangely. One of them even asked me if I was in denial.

During the meeting I at the very least got to find out what Steven was writing in that little book all those days in the coffee shop and it turned out to be a long “Fifth Step” where the alcoholic is supposed to take a personal inventory. In there was a litany of crimes that he voiced out loud including not paying his child support (surprise!) to his wife (surprise!), doing crack cocaine (surprise!) and driving drunk and hitting an old man (surprise!). So it seems that glow I saw on his face and then kind of fell in love with was not the glow of writer inspiration but rather some kind of sweaty guilt.

After the A.A. meeting, Steven invited me along with the rest to that same old coffee shop. I told him to “get with the program” and walked home alone.

 

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Online Dating – Some Are Luckier Than Others

May 10, 2007

I have this friend Shari. Like my friend Darlene she is also twenty-six and she has also fell in love online. Sure there is a six year age difference (he is twenty) but at least it is working this time. (He is a very mature twenty years old and is not sitting around watching Star Trek or dropping E all day.)

As I mentioned in the last blog Darlene seemed to find her true love online right away. Shari is a much different story. The more she tries the trickier the men she meets get. In the past Shari has had some pretty bad luck when it comes to men (until this last one but we will see!)

Before Shari met Christopher, she did have a couple of bad experiences that would have soured me on the whole Internet thing. Not catastrophic or truly horrible, but kind of so-so. Depressing enough to send you down to the local meet market bar.

For instance, she was thrilled when one guy she wrote to finally sent her his picture. They agreed to meet in person at a local restaurant. Imagine her surprise when her date rolled up to the table in a wheelchair. I considered seeing him, but

Then I realized …this is not fair. He omitted this information in his email and I couldn’t tell this from the photo he sent me. So I had to tell him, gently, nicely, that this kind of dishonesty was not for me.

Shari also had a one-night stand with an out of work actor that she met on the net as well.

“First I met in him in a cafe. He was also quite a bit younger than me. The whole thing was quite fast and furious…he came over that night and made love. The next day when he tried to come over again, I had to tell him that it was just for sex. He wanted a relationship and I didn’t, so he had to go. It just didn’t click. He was heartbroken.”

Even though it is possible to find sex and even a husband on the Internet, cyber-dating is still a risky business — especially for women. According WHOA (Women Halting Online Harassment) “while men are certainly harassed online, 87% of our reported cases our female. Also 54% of the victims were in the 18 to 30 range. 53% of the victims who came to us had no previous contact with the correspondents. Email is the most common forum where harassment beings –39.5% were stalked or harassed by email and 15.5% began getting harassed after

meeting someone in a chat room.

So from what I am gathering so far, online romance is the most dangerous option for dating if you are single, white, female and under thirty but it might also be your best shot at meeting someone for real. The irony is that whether you end up having a stalker or a genuine soul mate showing up at your door you are probably still going to get that declaration of love you were longing to hear.

 

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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!

 

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Great Joke

September 20, 2006

A man escapes from prison where he has been for 15 years. He breaks into a house to look for money and guns and finds a young couple in bed.

He orders the guy out of bed and ties him to a chair, while tying the girl to the bed he gets on top of her, kisses her neck, then gets up and goes into the bathroom. While he’s in there, the husband tells his wife:

“Listen, this guy’s an escaped convict, look at his clothes! He probably spent lots of time in jail and hasn’t seen a woman in years. I saw how he kissed your neck.” If he wants sex, don’t resist, don’t complain, do whatever he tells you. Satisfy him no matter how much he nauseates you. This guy is probably very dangerous. If he gets angry, he’ll kill us. Be strong, honey. I love you.”

To which his wife responds: “He wasn’t kissing my neck. He was whispering in my ear. He told me he was gay, thought you were cute, and asked me if we had any vaseline. I told him it was in the bathroom. Be strong honey. I love you too!!”

 

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