Things I Miss About Having A Girlfriend...

Last week was an interesting week for me. Mostly because it was the first week where my job search really paid off. I had two interviews that week, which is a record for me so far. The other reason it was an interesting week is because on the way back from the interview I had in Acton, a very strange thing happened. A car that was driving next to me on the highway started beeping it's horn to get my attention, when I looked a girl had rolled down the window and lifted her shirt, displaying her rather impressive chest! To be completely honest, it was a shocking event, but also completely awesome!

It did get me thinking about a great many things regarding women and my relationships with them. Funnily enough, it wasn't anything bad, just stuff I miss. Granted, I haven't had many girlfriends and the ones I did have were wildly different, but they all had certain key qualities that resonated with me. I miss those qualities, which brings us to the point of this post.

For some bizarre reason, it's considered unmanly to admit to actually liking women. I have no idea why since the point of heterosexual males is to get women. I've never really understood that, but whatever. Here I am, acting all unmanly and saying that I miss having a girlfriend. Don't get me wrong the day-to-day realities of a relationship are difficult at times, but there are certain things that I liked having while I was with a girl.


For example, I miss:

-- the way kissing her erased all the problems in the world and reminded me that the two of us were the only things that mattered.

-- the joy I felt in knowing she cared enough to worry about my happiness.

-- the scent of her in my bed reminding me of her while she was away.

-- the coolness she would try to display when she was worried about my opinion on something important to her.

-- the rush I got every time I did something to make her happy.

-- the look on her face when I tell her I love her.

-- the way she whispered my name in the night.

-- the thrill I got when I came home and she was there.

-- the unconscious gestures of possession she made when other women paid undue attention to me.

-- the hidden signs of approval I got from other guys when they saw me with her.

-- the warmth of her in my arms.


Please remember, these things are not tied to any one particular girlfriend, but to all of them. They are the small items that when they connect in my head, and my heart, tell me that I'm in a real, solid relationship. Tell me, my dear readers, what are the things that make a relationship real for you?

Some Good Company

In previous essays, I've written down my thoughts on love, marriage, and being single. Even now, I stand by each and every one of those essays. (But the writer in me wishes I had done a better job writing them!) However, there was always an underlying assumption in those works: I was on the outside looking in at the subject matter. While it is my contention that you can only get an objective assessment from OUTSIDE a situation, being INSIDE does afford one more detailed, and nuanced view of any given topic. And I've always believed that MORE information is better than less. That being said, I've been given a chance to re-examine my stance on the various facets of the romantic relationship from INSIDE one. Yes, my dear readers, I recently met a lovely young lady, and took her out on our first date.

Okay, now that you've gotten yourselves off the floor, and cleaned up that drool from the corner of your mouth that always happens when you pass out, here is the story.

For a long while now, I've known that going out and meeting women in the standard way goes against every single one of my strengths. Bars, or supermarkets, or whatever venue to which a man goes to pick up women all operate on an initial assessment of physical attractiveness that determines who women will talk to, who men try to pick up, etc. Any honest survey of my looks reveals that I'm not anywhere near what this country considers physically attractive. So, going out to meet women will just lead to unnecessary rejection. To counteract this, I played to my strengths and put up a profile on a couple of different online dating sites. I actively sent messages to women on these sites, and after about six months or so, I finally got a hit!

We emailed each other for a couple of days, and then started chatting on Yahoo Messenger. After 3-4 days of chatting online, she consented to meet in person for a date. Given the ever present dangers of meeting people who you've contacted online, I chose a public venue and daytime hour for our date. Our first date was for lunch at a local steakhouse, afterwards we would walk around a mall and chat, getting to know each other on a personal level. She agreed. Then I spent the next few days, in morbid anticipation of how many possible ways this date could go wrong.

Date day, or "D Day" as one of my literally inclined friends called it, arrived, and it was a bright sunny day. A good omen, I thought. I get to the steakhouse a few minutes early, only to receive a text that my date was caught in traffic and running late. Not a problem. Then she took a wrong exit and got lost. She ended up appearing at the restaurant about an hour late. For 30 minutes of that hour, I was trapped in a prison of pure psychological panic. Thoughts like "This is a sign", "She's making this up so she won't have to come.", and other such nonsense populated my mind. Then I put all that crap out of my head, and started listening to music and singing along to whatever was playing on my iPod. She showed up and parked next to me while I was in the middle of a song..... Talk about a great first impression!

I got out of my car, and since this was our first time meeting, I held out my hand and introduced myself. She'd already heard me singing, so now displaying good manners couldn't hurt. We walked in, sat down, and had a nice meal. Now, dear readers, you know that she & I had been chatting online prior to this, and she had told me she was extremely shy. During the date, this fact kept escaping my mind. So, throughout the meal, I'm being myself (Oh No!!) and chit-chatting away, and getting very little response. I work to keep the conversation going, try to keep things funny, and interesting. Meanwhile, everything I'm reading from her body language is telling me that she's SO not interested. Then we go to the mall, where I find out that I've run into one of the few women on the planet that DOESN'T like shopping. Not even window shopping. We talked a bit as we walked around, I found a Perfumania, which I led her into, remembering that she likes her guys with good smelling cologne. I find an old favorite, and much to my surprise, she likes it. We keep walking around the mall, and end up going to the Disney store where she picks up a gift for a young family member who was really into Buzz Lightyear. At this point, she's tired of the mall. So, not having anything else planned, I drive her back to her car, and we stay in my car parked outside the steakhouse and talk for another hour, hour and a half. Topics ranging from sports to kayaking, from karaoke to Glee. After awhile, she said she had to go, and I walked her to car. I gave her a hug good-bye (during which she said "Wow, you smell good!" Thank you Azzaro cologne!!), and a kiss on the cheek. And then she drove away.

And that's it. That was my first date in over two years.

My assessments after the date. She was completely bored, and regretting the whole time she was with me. But she didn't bail out early, which was mystifying. I was expecting the bail out call at any point during the date. Sometime in the couple of hours after the date, I remembered that she had told me she was really shy in person. At which point, my brain (no longer in the grips of crash & burn date panic), popped up all the times during the date she told me that she was having a good time, and that she was still kind of shy since we were just meeting for the first time.

A couple of days later, she and I chatted on instant messenger again, and we kind of did our own post-date breakdown. Turns out she had a blast!! She thought I was a great singer, and now understands why I enjoy karaoke so much. She thought I was nice and kind, and very gracious, especially when I introduced myself, and handsome! (Talk about seeing things from a different viewpoint!) That's something I *RARELY* hear from women, even though I keep telling them how hot I am! And much to my surprise, she agreed to go out on a SECOND date later this week!!

Well, dear readers? Thoughts??

Thoughts On... Love (old essay)

Again, here's an old essay I wrote, that I fixed up the writing. Thoughts? Comments?
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At some point in their lives, every single human on the planet comes up with a definition of love. Some people think it over, others use their own personal experiences, and still others just develop an idea of it as their ambitions take them down the fast track of their lives. In the end, every one has their own definition of love. The problem with that is that love usually deals with two people being involved with each other, trying to show that they love each other with all they have. But when those two people are operating with two vastly different definitions of love, problems are born. The thing is most people don’t sit down and think about what they believe love should be and more importantly, why they feel that way about love. So as their lover asks questions in an attempt to figure out how to make them happy, they are incapable of explaining how they feel because the words just aren’t there. Due to my personal interests, experiences, and lifestyle, I HAVE thought about this particular topic and in an effort to get YOU to think about it, I’ll give you MY definition of what love should be. If you agree, then you can use my words as your own. If not, now you have something to start with.

Love, in its best form, enhances your strengths and renders your weaknesses obsolete. When I think of love, the image that comes to mind is two walls leaning against each other. I know, I know. Not exactly a romantic picture, but there's more to it than immediately comes to mind. In this metaphor, each wall represents a person. Just as a person, the wall has strengths and weaknesses.

Many people believe that they have a soul-mate, some perfect person, out there waiting for them, in order to make them complete. But if you think about that statement, romantic as it sounds, there are errors in it. Are these people saying that they (and by supposition, everyone else) are fractional people, that they are not whole and are dependent on some other fractional person to make themselves cohesive and effective? Can you imagine, dear reader, what that world would be like? Half-people walking around like zombies, not being able to do anything until they are completed by some other half-person.

Looking at it from the point of view of my metaphor, what kind of strength does a wall have if it's full of gaps & holes? How can it stand up to the trials & stresses of this world? Thank you, Jerry Maguire, but I find that belief idiotic. I prefer to see everyone out there as a full person, "actual and whole" (thank you Captain Reynolds) with all the attendant pleasures and pains. And that doesn’t go away or change just because you fall in love with someone. It’s a time tested fact that there is strength in numbers. You can look at any type of warfare or any assessment of computing technology for proof. Keeping that in mind, what sounds stronger and more capable to endure the trials and tribulations of life in the world of today, dear reader, a fusion of two halves into a single whole being attacked from all sides or two individuals standing together backing each other up? That's why my metaphor has TWO walls leaning against each other, you don't stop being an independent person when you fall in love.

And let's not forget that love (and a relationship) happens over time. Which is why I’ve always found it hilarious when people who believe their lovers "complete" them say later on down the line, "They’re just not the person I fell in love with." Of course not! Over the course of their relationship to you, they’ve fused with you to become something else! Everything that made them (and by supposition, YOU) interesting and different, not to mention appealing, is gone and you willingly participated in its destruction. Now, here’s a question to all of you out there waiting for someone to "complete" you. Assume, for a moment, you find someone to complete you. What happens when your "other half" is taken away, as in a car accident? Do you revert into this half person, forever doomed to being an ineffectual zombie since your soul-mate is no longer part of this world? How are you to survive? There’s no one else to save you and make you complete since you only have the ONE soul-mate, right? What then?

This brings us to another aspect of my metaphor: there are two SEPARATE walls working together to stay up. I’m sorry, but I’d prefer to rest assured in whatever afterlife there is that my lover will survive and move on without me. The only way to do that is to make sure she has a life separate from me that can sustain her through the pain of my death, and allow her to heal and move on to the next man she chooses to be in her life, if that’s the path she takes. That is something that only an individual can do, not a fractional person. The question is then, how does that work in the day to day dealings of a relationship? That part is easy. Make sure that no matter how close the two of you get, there is something that THE BOTH OF YOU HAVE that is independent of the other. They have their love of performing jazz music and you have your love of working on cars or something. Does that mean you can’t participate in your lover’s interest? Of course not, show up at their jazz gigs and let them know it’s okay for them to ask you to work on their sister’s car. But don’t take up saxophone and insert yourself into their band or let them start reading up on cars and helping you out. The idea is that while the two of you are going to be sharing the bulk of your time and activities, there should be some things in your life that are just YOURS and same goes for your lover.

At the end of the day, you want to see your lover happy and they want you to be happy. Not because of some magical altruistic quality that love imbues the both of you with, but because, at its best, love is a form of enlightened self-interest. You want your lover to be happy because it makes YOU happy to see them that way and vice versa. Basically, you’re doing it to make YOURSELF happy. Think about the two walls for a sec. If you’re wall A and you’re interested in staying up, you’ll do whatever you can to make sure wall B is at it’s best since they’re holding you up. The best part? Wall B is thinking the same thing about you. Now, developing your own interests (or maintaining ones you had before the two of you got together) does give you things that your lover can take away. And because you love them, you’d stop those interests, but because they’re interested in you being happy, they won’t ask that of you and vice versa. It’s a choice the both of you make in order to make each other happy. And that brings me to my next point.

Love, in its most enduring form, happens because two people choose to be together. It’s a wonderful thing, and it should happen more often. But love is a human conceit and like all things human, it is mortal and can die if not maintained. (The tried and true method to kill love? Apathy. It takes time, but it’s 100% effective.) It starts with the choice of the two of you wanting to be with one another. Then it continues with you saying every day, all day, that you STILL want to be with this person. Out of all the options available to you, staying with your lover is what you DESIRE. It’s not something you need, like food or air. Romantic as it might sound to tell someone that your love for them is the food of your life, that also means that your love for them is crap that you flush down the toilet. Does that still seem romantic? Not to mention the fact that "need" has a nasty habit of turning into "obsession", and that is no longer love. Glenn Close did not love Michael Douglas at the end of Fatal Attraction. She was obsessed.

Staying with your lover because you desire to also helps reinforce the individuality of both you AND your lover, because both of you are mutually desirous of being together. As a fringe benefit, it also gives you a way out of the relationship. When either you or your lover don’t desire to be together, walk away. Several friends of mine have asked me what I would do if I found out my lover was cheating on me. My answer is really simple. I would ask her to choose who she wants to be with, right then and there. If she chooses the other person, I’ll let her go. If she chooses me, we work together to find out what was wrong that led her to cheat and fix it. No games, and no drama. Why? Because as the object of my love, I want my lover to be happy. That doesn’t necessarily mean that she’ll be happy WITH ME. That’s where the ENLIGHTENED part of enlightened self-interest kicks in. I can’t say it’s easy, but it IS simple.

Throughout this essay, I’ve made references to the "forms" of love. That’s because there isn’t just one kind of love. The point of this essay is romantic love, but a great deal of the points I’ve made here work towards all other types of love. Most people have an idea of the different types of love: the love a parent has for a child, the love someone has for their siblings, the love someone has for their friends, etc. But few think about the different forms each of those types of love can take.

For example, there’s "tough love", where someone forsakes a measure of closeness to harden the person they love in order to prepare them for a harsh world. Or "fairy tale love", where nothing else matters but that the two lovers are together, everything else will take care of itself as long as they stay together. This is a type of love that can never exist in the real world, but can provide an exceedingly effective respite from a bad situation. Other forms of love include: un-requited love, where you’re in love with someone who doesn’t share that love. (My speciality!) Sacrificial love, when you give up yourself and your desires and ambitions for the one you love. This is most often what feeds parental love, but other types of love use this form as well. Jealous love, where someone chooses to make sure the person they love is isolated from any threats to that love. Zealous love, where someone subsumes their interests and beliefs in the interests and beliefs of the one they love. And there are more out there.

Love is extremely complex, and I am by no means an expert on the subject. But, if you’re in a relationship or thinking about getting into one, I do recommend you think about what love means to you and make sure you communicate that to your lover. And if you don’t know what love is to you, start with this question: do you agree with this essay? Why or why not?

Thoughts On... Being Alone (Old Essay)

This is an old essay of mine that I recently came across and fixed up a bit. Mostly in structure. As always, thoughts and/or comments are appreciated!!

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Recently, it seems that a great many of the people around me are having major issues with their love lives. Inevitably, because I care about the people, I get pulled in to those very same issues. Although for me, it's more in the consultant capacity than anything else. While I am taking part, these issues don't hit me as hard as they do the people more intimately involved.

But the part that is really interesting (and the reason for this essay) is how despite all the issues with love going on around me (both good and bad) I don't seem to share the driving impulse to be with someone and bring my love life into existence. While it would be nice to share my weird, dark world with a woman, I am also comfortable with the idea of being single for the rest of my life. Which ever way my future plays out is fine by me. People I tell this to, all ask the same question: "How can you deal with being alone?"

While technically I am not really alone (after all, I do have other humans around me), it's easy to understand what they mean and the question does have some merit. The wording of my answer varies depending on my mood, but the meaning behind it stays the same. I've been alone for so long now that it's become the natural status of my existence. Like gravity and the chemical composition of water molecules, my being "alone" is a built in function of my world and nothing to be lamented or worried over.

It seems that most people have this latent fear of dying alone with no loved ones around them. No one to care that they were in this world or that they are leaving it. As long as they have at least one person with them (although most would have a significant other and many children), their lives have mattered. I don't have this fear. I believe the reason I don't subscribe to this fear has to do with the fundamental principles upon which I base the way I view the world.

The natural questions to ask, of course, are what are the fundamental principles I'm talking about and how do they influence the way I view the world? While I'm at it, another question to throw in there is how do I see the world? Most of the principles that guide my worldview are beyond the scope of this essay. However, there are three that apply here.

1) The world as we know it, is completely and entirely independent of me.

In other words, if I had never existed, the world would still be here. The rules of gravity, light, television, etc. would all still be the same. Granted, there would be some differences, but the world (the universe, reality) doesn't depend on my being here for its existence. While I am a part of the world, and I am in the world, there is a limit to how far my connection to the world goes and consequently how much I can affect the world. There is a limit to how much I matter. There is a distinct line beyond which I can not reach. By necessity this implies a separation or aloneness here, and this is just based on my existing.

2) The world operates on rules.

To say these rules are complex would be like saying the universe is big. The rules of the world are orderly, concrete and unbreakable, yet fluid, chaotic, and subject to change at a moment's notice. And as if the rules themselves weren't complex enough, they also interact with each other on infinite levels and in infinite ways, creating even more nuances and variations, both great and small. The quest that science has undertaken fully supports this, since the basic mission of any scientist is to understand how the world works. And as anyone can see from how much life has changed in the past hundred or so years, knowledge of those rules, even as incomplete as our knowledge is, can have a powerful effect on a society or a person. This is one of the reasons why I place such a high value on gathering information and learning. The second reason is my third principle.

3) My world is built with the information I gather from everything around me.

The information my senses provide, the information people give me when I interact with them, and how that new information interacts with the information I already have is what makes up my world. Since, according to my first principle, the world is independent of me, the best way to ensure my continued existence is to make sure that my world is as close to the actual world as possible. This places enormous importance on the accuracy and integrity of the information I have. This is why truth, no matter how painful, is always preferable. Because no matter what pain the faulty information is attempting to avoid, the pain that is delivered when my world is shattered by the real world is infinitely worse.

So, what does any of what I just wrote have to do with being alone and my not having a problem with that?

Well let's look at this with my third principle in mind. I stated earlier that I'm not really alone. And, I'm not. There are other people on this planet, and I interact with them on a daily basis. To be completely accurate, this essay is really talking about being single and how I deal with the fact that I may be single for the rest of my life. If my world is built with the information I gather, part of my world is built with my memories & experiences. Since I have been single most of my life, those memories & experiences would suggest that being single is my natural state of being and that being in a relationship is the aberration. Add to that my second principle: the world operates on rules. What rule is there that says I must in a relationship? Or that being in a relationship is necessary or even desirable? In other words, there are many benefits to being single.

For example, being single allows me to build my own world. It allows me to define who I am as person, what I like and don't like, and what I will or will not do without the direct influence of a single outside party. How many relationships are there where one person is completely and totally dependent on the other for everything? Not only regarding financial concerns, but also to define opinions, like a guy asking his girlfriend "Honey, what do I like to eat?" How many relationships define the person's total identity, like a girl introducing herself as "I'm his girlfriend, Diana" which implies the relationship is her identity and her name is a role she's playing in the relationship as opposed to "I'm Diana, his girlfriend." How many relationships define what action can or cannot be taken, like a guy saying "I can't have this burger cause my girlfriend is a vegan." As a single person, those influences are absent in the creation of my world. I am solely responsible for my actions or lack thereof. Another example, I have a great many female friends and being single allows me to be able to spend any amount of time alone with them with no pressure of any kind. For those of you reading this that are in a relationship, imagine being able to spend as much time as you want with someone of the opposite sex without having the thought of what your significant other would say or think about what you're doing constantly running in the background. And these are just a few examples of the freedoms being single provides.

However, all that was stated above is just theoretical. As I said earlier, in my world, my default status is to be single, which means that right now I am the way I am supposed to be. My experiences do not support the assumption that being with someone is the way to be happy and that I should be devoting every ounce of my energy to finding someone to be with for the rest of my life. I have been in relationships that started with great happiness, but then degenerated into mistrust and confusion. Not to mention that during the time I was actively searching for someone, the never ending series of rejections kept me in one of the darkest states of depression I've ever been in for the greater part of seven years. And it's not just my own experiences that go against the assumption. I have seen relationships self-destruct for no reason, seen people stay in relationships that don't even come close to making them happy for years on end, and watched as friendships, that had lasted for years, were destroyed for the sake of relationships.

Another benefit of my worldview is that since I don't make the common mistake that my every happiness depends on being with someone, I'm free to be happy right now as I am and enjoy the life I'm currently leading and not crying about my life while hiding in the dream of what my life could be like if only I had a woman with me.

The statement I wrote earlier, I am not alone, has many facets. One of these was discussed above. Another is that despite my worldview, I have to deal with people who operate under the assumption that being single is a painful situation that must be rectified immediately. In other words, I have to deal with people who operate in a completely opposite way of thinking. How do I deal with these people? This is where a combination of all three principles come in. The other people around me are in their separate worlds, each one with a different set of rules completely distinct from my own and they are working to build their world as they see fit. If my own world has any validity, then I can not, in good conscience, deny the validity of their world, despite the flaws I see in their system of logic.

My world isn't perfect. There are many problems in my life, and the way I see things has helped cause some of them and has helped in developing solutions for some of them as well. But, I can say this, my worldview lets me enjoy my life being single (or being alone) because I don't tremble down to roots of my soul or have despair clutch my heart in a death grip at the thought of spending my life as a bachelor.

As for relationships, I do believe that they offer many rewards and are worth the work it takes to start and maintain one. In my experience, I have seen wonderous transformations occur with two people coming together. And, I am open to the idea that at some point in the future, I will be in a relationship again. But I am not going to let my not being in a relationship stop me from being happy with my life.

Third Wheel Blues

I find it quite interesting that I can't seem to escape being the third wheel. Even in my own home. One of my roommates is married. Her husband is staying over for a couple of weeks. Now, it's been a little while since they've seen each other. I understand that. And it doesn't bother me that the husband is here. He and I are also good friends. But within minutes of them being together, I got the distinct sensation that I'm intruding on their time alone. Mind you, we're in MY apartment, in MY room, watching a movie on MY computer and I'm intruding on THEM!

I understand it's not intentional. They've just not been together for awhile. And (hopefully) it might dissipate over the course of the next few days. Here's the thing. The problem with being a third wheel is that when you're in the situation, you want to get away from it. It's tiresome, annoying, and exceptionally uncomfortable. Normally, what I'd do is make some excuse to go away and get back home. But what happens when the situation is IN my home? Then what? How do I get out of this?

My home is the place I go to feel comfortable. Where I don't have to maintain the facade that allows me my marginal acceptance into society. In my home, I do what I want, how I want, and damn what everyone else thinks about it.

It was bad enough having to adjust to having roommates. Now, I'm the third wheel in my own house.

The Friend Zone

I'm in a select subset of the male population. I have no problem with female friends. In fact, I've got TONS of female friends. They actually OUTNUMBER my guy friends. And all of these women are very beautiful. It's really cool, but at the same time, it kind of sucks. Think about this for a minute, at any given moment, I'm surrounded by any number of gorgeous women who see me as a sexless entity, a good buddy, someone to talk to, etc. It's like crawling through the desert, just to be shown a PICTURE of a glass of water.

If the late, great Rod Serling were to write an intro to a show about this, it might go something like this:

You're about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a torturous land whose boundaries are that of temptation. It is the middle ground between amity and lust, between camaraderie and romance, and it lies between the pit of woman's empathy and the summit of her passion. This is the dimension of benevolence. The signpost up ahead states your destination, you're about to enter…
THE FRIEND ZONE

The problem is, like Roach Motels, once you check in to the Friend Zone, it seems you can't check out. The only egress is to NOT go in. But how do you avoid that?

If you all have any ideas, let me know.