I'm a little suspicious of romance. I know, I'm literally writing a dating blog, but the traditional romance thing just doesn't do it for me. I'm good at the talking, and I'm good at the DOIN' IT, but buying flowers? Idk, man.
That's why I was surprised to find that, halfway through date #3, I wanted to ask if I could kiss her. I didn't ask and I didn't do it, but imagined it. In my head it was soft and slow, and didn't immediately lead to hot car sex. I imagined us exchanging winky-faced texts and like...making dinner together. Who even am I? Truly, reader, she was just so sweet. Newer to dating women than me but around the same age. Curious, funny, smart. Quite smart, actually, in all the ways I value. Reads books. Emotional intelligence. Self-awareness. There are myriad reasons things do or don't work out, but it seemed noteworthy for me feel attracted to someone in this way. I'm going to ask her out again.
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Date number two was nice. As I shared in my last post, we met at an Indian buffet for lunch on a Saturday.
The first half, conversation was a little stilted and awkward. But right around my second plate of saag paneer, something clicked and we started laughing and talking like friends. We parted ways with a hug and texted a bit afterward. I got the invite for a second date later in the week, but couldn't go because I was out of town. I posed a question a couple days later to re-start the conversation, but didn't get an answer. Probably that's the end of that. Mildly disappointing, but not devastating. I had a nice time, ate some decent food. All in all, a fairly standard date experience. It was with a couple. You might think that would make it especially titillating, but it's not like we were having sex on the salad bar. The whole thing was pretty chill. We matched on some app, exchanged texts, made plans, and spent a couple of hours getting to know each other. Far as I can tell, it didn't work out. Fairly standard? What is "fairly standard" when you aren't dating within a heteronormative paradigm? Indian food is a bold first date choice for corn-fed Midwesterners.
I went on date #2 this weekend, but first, dear reader, I want to talk to you about therapy. I'm a big believer in therapy. My initial experience in counseling was more than twenty years ago. At the tender age of ten, my mom took me to her therapist -- presumably to ensure that my tumultuous relationship with my bio-dad wasn't messing me up too badly. I loved therapy. As a kid I enjoyed talking to adults, and talking about myself. A whole hour in which the primary objective was to examine myself at great depth with a captive audience? Yes, please. I started back up with a new therapist this week. Intake appointments are rarely a revelation. It's a lot like a first date, actually. You get to know each other, share your expectations, see if it's a good fit. I liked this counselor. Halfway through our session she asked what I was looking for in a therapist, and I was surprised to find that I didn't have an answer. Y'all. I don't know what I want. I am a very goal-driven person. I approach situations strategically. I figure out what success looks like for any given project, experience, goal or relationship, and then I develop a plan that should result in the achievement of said goal. This has served me quite well at work. It's also been helpful for my therapists in the past, especially when I was really struggling. For example: I want to stop having panic attacks. (Clear, attainable vision with a measurable goal); I want to let go of the anger I feel toward my bio-dad. (Great. A worthy goal with logical steps toward achieving it.) But right now? Right now I want... I want... I don't know how to capture it in words. I just keep coming back to this: I don't know what I want. And I'm not just talking about therapy. I connected with SM on Bumble and met her at the downtown art museum. We didn't trade many messages -- just a brief chat about art and an exchange to make plans. And we both showed up! That feels like something of a miracle. I don't know how much app-based dating you do these days, reader, but I'm finding that the proportion of people who match, chat, make plans and then ACTUALLY SHOW UP FOR THE DATE is getting smaller and smaller.
I felt initial physical chemistry. We started with tea at the café, then walked around, talked about art, took pictures. At this particular art museum there's a whole room of projects you can do and take home. The target audience is likely children, but the facilitators seemed happy to see us, too. I made a print! I love a date that ends in a souvenir (that isn't, like, chlamydia). Afterward, we got dinner, and then I went home. Overall, a very diverting afternoon. Also, it turns out, a case of mismatched expectations. SM is not here for monogamous relationships with women. In fact, she's already in an open relationship with a man. And, dear reader, as I have shared, the name of the game in 2019 is relationship. I think. I intended to keep this PG-13 -- it's semi-anonymous blog, emphasis on the semi. I engage the internet with the understanding that I have no expectation of full privacy here. For the first iteration of this blog, I tried to write about my dates as if they were definitely going to read what I wrote, and I kept sex more or less out of things. I intend to keep the first rule, but I'm less sure about the second. Coming out was expansive. For years I built a wall around my queer self, and all kinds of things got bricked in. As the wall came down, I was able to stretch out. Queer is such an expansive word, and I feel more expansive inside it. I think about dating and love differently than I did five years ago, but I also think about sex differently. Can I write authentically about dating without talking about sex? I don't think I can. (Sorry, mom). (JK, my mom's not reading this.) (I don't think.) I've cultivated enough sex-positivity to know that I can feel and act on physical attraction with someone with whom I do not intend to build a life partnership. I can, sometimes I do, and I believe that is a-ok. I know! Sex positive! But I'd also come to believe that you can't hook up with randos and date for love at the same time. People are like phones. I can be in airplane mode or use 3G, but I can't be in airplane mode and use 3G. If what I want is a relationship, I need to be in "relationship" mode -- only spending time with people I see as potential partners, waiting a reasonable amount of time before achieving intimacy, etc, etc. Relationship mode does not include drinking two bottles of wine and a casual Saturday night threesome. Except, it turns out, I'm not a phone. A week after meeting, SM and I went shopping on a gray, rainy Saturday. We came back to her place for wine and movies, and later on her boyfriend brought us tacos. One thing led to another, and... That was a week ago, and I've spent a fair bit of time taking inventory of my feelings. Am I okay? I am. I had a great time! I liked sleeping with SM and her boyfriend. I'd probably do it again. Are my feelings for SM complicated? No. She's hot. She's fun. I also don't want to be in a monogamous partnership with her. Am I still hoping to build a long-term partnership with someone? Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm not currently in a monogamous partnership. And it doesn't change the fact that last weekend, I wanted to say yes to something else, and I'm not sorry that I did. I want to find my person, but I can't will that person into existence. I may or may not find them, and history would suggest I have no idea what behavior patterns will lead me toward them. So I am going to keep saying yes when I want to, and I'll continue to check in with myself -- and with you, dear reader. I kissed a girl on New Year's Eve. Actually three girls -- I was a little caught up. Lesbian bar, music, champaign shots... I turned to this hot girl next to me and said, "you know, we could kiss" and she smiled and said "okay" and then I did it two more times.
This doubles the total number of women I've kissed, though I do have a lot of experience kissing (male) strangers. I might've even used that same line before, on dudes. All week I've been wrestling with this question: was it different? It was, and it wasn't. It's never been particularly hard for me to hit on people (with the assistance of alcohol). In some ways I felt really similar to the way I did hitting on dudes five or six years ago. Excited. Sexy. Confident. I also asked one of the girls I kissed if she wanted to get coffee sometime. That's different. I've never asked a random guy in a bar on an actual date, like for later. The objective's always been more... immediate. Sadly she lives 2,000 miles away. But I asked! And I think she might have said yes if we lived in the same town. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I asked anyone on a date without the assistance of an app, and it is definitely the first time I asked a woman (like, to her face) on a date. A lot of things are different now. I'm older. I know myself better. I'm not interested in just hooking up. In fact, maybe the biggest change is in how I feel -- even compared to a month ago or two ago. I'm more hopeful, more interested. A new year, full of possibility and potential, can bring those feelings to the surface. So can kissing three girls in one night. I started this blog in 2014, when I was twenty-nine. I've always made sense of the world through writing, so I wanted to see if I might apply that logic to the part of my life that made the least amount of sense: dating. Why was I single? What could I do about it?
I set a goal: I'd go on thirteen first dates in the course of one year. I'd either meet someone, or meet that goal and learn something about myself. It worked, and it didn't. I did not find a partner, and I stopped writing shortly after "meeting" my goal. While I've dated a few people over the last five years, no one turned into a serious relationship. I certainly can't tell you why I'm single, and I'm not convinced that I can do anything about it. But I did start to find answers to other questions -- questions I didn't even know to ask. Who am I? Who do I want to be, both for myself and for other people? How can I love myself better? What kind of partner do I want, and what kind of partner do I want to be? Shortly after I stopped writing in 2015, I came out as bisexual. First to myself, then to my close friends, then to my family. The first thirteen-date experiment was the final set of reflections that helped me see myself clearly, maybe for the first time ever. What I shared with you in that first blog was true, but it was also incomplete. Capturing my truth, week after week, helped me see what was missing. I wasn't ready to share then, but I think I am now. I still make sense of the world through writing, and (as a millennial) I still like the accountability that comes with sharing that writing publicly. So! I'm thirty-four now. I'm in a new city, starting a new year, and ready to set a new goal. In 2019, I will go on thirteen dates with women. I won't necessarily date only women (#bisexual), but I will date women. I will also make an adjustment to my original goal structure. While I won't drop the "first" from the blog title, I will not equate first dates with success. Thirteen dates, total. They could all be with the same woman, they could be with different women. The goal is, it has to be a date. Not a casual hang, a date. One of my favorite teachers, laura brewer, encouraged her students to find the fear as they reflected on last year. Well, dear readers, hitting "post" on this update is absolutely terrifying. So it's probably exactly what I ought to be doing. It's been a minute.
A lot has changed, and also nothing has changed. After reflecting on the past year, I've decided to return to the blog. Get excited, world. Jane's going on more dates. Although federally recognized as Washington's Birthday, the third Monday in February is colloquially referred to as "Presidents' Day." Last night I wondered if there was any more significance to this holiday than literally celebrating Presidents of the US.
There is not. "Presidents Day was informally coined in a deliberate attempt to use the holiday to honor multiple presidents and is virtually always used that way today." Well fuck that noise. Do a bunch of super powerful white dudes (Obama notwithstanding) really need another day (beyond, you know, every day) for us to celebrate them? Nope. Dear readers, I am reclaiming Presidents' Day - for all the single ladies, everywhere. Maybe we'll call it Madame President's Day. More on that in a minute. But first...I've been thinking. Our country pretty actively discriminates against single people. I want to be very clear that I'm not comparing being single in America to racism, homophobia, classism, sexism...any of the other identity markers that facilitate oppression in this country. I would not tackle those things in a whimsical blog post on my dating (or now it seems, not-dating) blog. I was also just chatting with a dear friend who rightly pointed out that being in a relationship is not always rainbows and sunshine, either. We're all humans, whose lives and mental health and emotional wellness ebb and flow. But listen, I do think singles discrimination is a real thing. A few ways single people might experience discrimination. Married people get...
This Atlantic article from 2013 calculated - conservatively - that over her lifetime a single woman might, through taxes, social security, housing and healthcare, pay more than a million dollars extra for being single. A MILLION F'ING DOLLARS. All of those things can make being single feel like a punishment. Like choosing to be single is not a good or legitimate state of being. It's earthly purgatory, where you're just waiting to become coupled and reap the emotional and fiduciary rewards. That shit affects you! Like, here's an example: I used to feel a ton of internal pressure to take on more work so that married or coupled people could go home to be with their spouses and families. Let me reiterate: that was INTERNAL pressure. No one told me to do that. I work with wonderful, kind people. I just believed that my life as a single person was less valuable than theirs. That belief, and the self-loathing resentfulness it caused, threatened to damage my relationships with close friends. I was kind of an asshole. My friends, thank sweet baby Jesus, are not assholes, and believe my life does have worth. We overcame. But I wondered what other impacts these messages about being single were having on me, maybe without me realizing it. So I decided that today - Madame President's Day - I would celebrate me and myself. No apologies. And please, if your response to that declaration is a paternal "good for her!" and a strong urge to pat me on the head, please check yourself. Is that a manifestation of SINGLES DISCRIMINATION? (Or, honestly, some kind of weird sexism? I am a grown-ass woman, there will be no head patting.) Here's what I did: I got up and made myself fancy brunch. Coffee with Baileys, bacon, omelette, sweet potatoes. I watched the SNL 40th anniversary special and laughed out loud, and then I watched the newest episode of The Walking Dead and talked to the characters the same way I would have if I were watching with someone else ("Oh, Sasha, nooooo!). I put on my new favorite shirt and went out into the world to sip tea and read. I bought myself some fro-yo, and I sat at the big, comfy corner table. I walked two miles and listened to Pitbull the whole time. I came home and opened a bottle of Cabernet I'd been saving for a special occasion. I AM A SPECIAL OCCASION. Then I dropped my favorite bath bomb into my tub and watched the water turn pink around me. Now I shall finish this post and watch some Beyonce videos. Happy Madame President's Day, y'all. No, really, I mean it. Happy Valentine's Day!
By all accounts, this day should be terrible for me. I'm home alone, sick with probably bronchitis. It's mid-afternoon and I've done nothing but watch TV and read half a chapter of a book. I'm starting to feel a little better, but the odds that I leave this house sit at about 1%. I still have 2 cans of soup. But I've also got no reason to lie, not after the relatively depressing (if true) Children of the Dirt Post. So here's all of my honesty: I'm glad my friends and family have love in their lives. Some people got married last week; I think some others are getting married today. A couple of people got engaged. That's good. New relationships, deepening relationships, changing relationships. I want to live in a world where people love each other, and work hard to understand each other and make things better. Love is at the center of that. All kinds of love. And I have love in my life. Valentine's Day is an invented holiday, anyhow. Why can't I choose to focus on what I do have, rather than what I lack? Isn't everyone just trying to the the best they can with what they have? You know, I didn't even see that much gushy stuff on Facebook. I hope people are not avoiding Facebook because of me, or people like me. Or maybe I don't -- it's kind of nice that folks out there might really consider what makes other people feel hurt or sad on a day like today. Not just me -- there are lots of other people out there like me. But I'll say it again, because it's the truth: I'm good. C'mon, I just dropped a hundo on books and scheduled another Stitch Fix. #ilovemyself If you listen to the podcast Invisibilia, you might have heard their recent episode on categories. If you don't want it to be spoiled, stop reading! Go listen to the last 10 minutes or and then come back. Actually just go listen, it's good.
Did you listen? Okay. I laughed. Did you? I laughed because for many years I have thought Plato's version of Aristophanes was full of shit. From a modern political perspective I appreciate the story's ancient inclusiveness, but I must reject the notion that I am somehow incomplete because I am un-partnered. That I'm destined to wander the earth in search of my other half. Sorry Mika and Hedwig. I don't buy it. If Plato's descriptions of love are true, then what the fuck is wrong with me? Why does my partner remain elusive? Am I just…broken? This is why Simon Rich's interpretation was so refreshing. He gave me a place to fit in. I am a child of the dirt. Thank god for wine and art. I laughed, but it's still an unsettling framework. If I let myself take solace in constructing my reality around Simon's description, then I'm not just lonely. I'm alone. I keep hearing the last line of the podcast, the one Alix repeated over and over. Because there's nobody for them. Not anybody in the world. I don't really believe that. Not really. But I understand the compulsion Simon felt to write about children of the dirt. Sometimes, I feel like I'm being slowly destroyed by hope. At first I couldn't quite name the reason I needed to turn off the online dating sites. I just felt frustrated and exhausted and knew I needed to get away. I've started to make sense of it now. I need to mourn. The truth is, I didn't want to "succeed." I wanted to find someone. I mean, I am not exactly mad that I met a goal. I did learn a lot about myself -- all the things I wrote back in January are true, and good. I just… I think deep down, until #15, I believed I could make love happen. A little bit, I thought The Secret might be true. Turns out, there is no secret. So I need to believe something new. Because while I am open to the possibility that love might happen for me, I can't hope that it's going to happen. Hope is killing me. |
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