AirDate

Why does it feel so "cliche" to want someone to spend your life with these days? Why does it make me feel so secretly defeated to admit that I want a someone to bitch to at the end of the day? I want someone who knows my favorite drink, and how to make it like I like it. Someone whose annoying habits become such a part of my own routine that in their absence I have a hard time figuring out what I'm missing. Why is it that I want to call this person my husband instead of my boyfriend or life partner? Is that the romantic in me that I just can't seem to squash--no matter how much heartbreak I endure?

Listening to NPR the other day, a guy called in telling some holiday tale of horror and described one key player in the story like this:

"My brother--well my wife's sister's husband, I should say, but we're all real close so..."

And I almost teared OVER! What. The. FUCK. It's just some hillbilly Willy talking about how the dog fell out a window and ruined the nativity scene right before the judges came by for the neighborhood contest, what's my problem?!

Am I really one of those crazy ring-chasing label-loving biological time bombs just waiting for someone to steal my last name?

That seems a little hard to believe. I'm not looking for someone to just fill the slot (pun probably intended). I'm looking for that stupid "moment" everyone keeps talking about. That "moment" when you meet someone and it feels different than the other people you've met. Well--a more accurate statement would be that I'm waiting for the guy I have a "moment" with to actually have one back. I'm constantly meeting guys who I think--wahwahweewah! what a great connection we have! I can hardly believe we just met! Or there are fellas on the match.com that look so good on paper I'm almost unnerved by our seeming compatibility. But those situations just end up with me having a crush to get over, and them having the ultimate wing-woman. I know it's all about chemistry and timing and blah blah blah you can't MAKE yourself attracted to someone--but I'm not that hard on the eyes.

I'm so disappointed in the match.com so far. 98% of the guys I get responses from are so unappealing. But that's not just an online phenomenon. On my flight out to Illinois 2 weeks ago I ended up talking to a nice young man, about my age. He was headed to the Moline Quad City airport as well so we walked from one terminal to our connecting gate at the Denver airport together. We were getting along great; joke here, side comment there, I'll-watch-your-stuff-while-you-take-a-piss, etc. Then we get into our career/passions and his response after I reveal I'm an aspiring fiction novelist was, "I don't enjoy reading that doesn't teach me anything, or has no Christian spiritual message."

Thanks for playing. Hats and coats can be picked up on your way out.

I don't mind if we have a difference of opinion--even when it comes to faith--but you have to respect my BELIEF that organized religion is the cause of more evil than good just as I will respect your belief in ancient zombie magic.

What? I'm kidding! (not really)

Christianity has a lot of wonderful principles, and many people wouldn't be able to live in the world without feeling like there's going to be a kick ass after party. Plus, it's a little awe inspiring to talk to someone who has true blind faith. It's just unfortunate that most of these diehard religious fanatics feel that if you're not with them, you're against them. Why can't I believe what I believe and you believe what you believe and we'll all co-exist without harming one another?

Anyway, we've wandered off the selfish topic of my love life so it's time to pull the plug. It's almost 4pm on New Year's Eve and it looks like, again, this will not be the year I get my first New Years Eve kiss. But that's okay, because I don't want just any old smooch. I want the kiss at the end of When Harry Met Sally or An Affair to Remember. Until then.....see you on the other side of 2010.

AnteDate

Great expectations.

Can someone please tell me how to rid myself of these terrible life crushing things? I tell you what, an overactive imagination can be a gal's own worst enemy. How do you get excited about something new without having any expectations attached to them? I need to know! Especially if the old saying is true: love shows up when you least EXPECT it.

fuck.

Maybe I just have too much time on my hands. Too much time spent in my own brain and not enough spent on busy work projects. The thing is, writing is what I like to do best and what I write about is a mix of my actual life and my "wish was" my actual life. Between the two, my brain is a constant hum of possible endings. I can hardly make any decisions without chasing down a plethora of outcomes for each one. Every man of promise who saunters through my life gets a spin on the dance floor of my daydreams. Not that I consider all the different story lines possible or even plausible, for that matter. They just crop up without my really meaning to think them at all. It's like that Levi's commercial that aired a few years ago, you know the one. The girl gets into the elevator next to a guy about her own age, shoves her hands into her pockets after they accidentally make eye contact and upon glimpsing her sliver of bare stomach his mind goes off on a tangent of their lives together. Just as he's seeing their fictional kids start to grow in that sliver of belly, the elevator door opens and she strolls out. This leads me to believe there ARE other people out there who's fantasy lives are more real than their everyday ones. Other than me, I mean.

Everyone's always beating into me this notion of, "Don't go into any of these dates with any expectation and you won't be disappointed." That's like telling Robinson Crusoe to remember to start with a little light salad and some chicken broth as you walk him into a Souplantation his first day off the island.

Yes yes, patience is a virtue, but how much fun to the virtuous have? How passionate is a virtuous affair? How memorable? How lasting? Howard Zinn met his wife while taking her a love note from another man. Less than a week after they met, he went off to war and they conducted their entire courtship via correspondence. They got married instantly when he came home on leave. Why is that so impossible now? Is romance dying because the purpose of it, coupling and copulation, is no longer dire? We don't really need more people in the world. We need population CONTROL not continuance. So now that our species has throughly infested the world, maybe our biological urges are getting confused. Are we, instinctually, becoming aware of our own non-necessity to breed and therefore becoming pickier and pickier about finding a mate? The smarter you are, the harder you are to match. The more unique, strange, funny, creative etc you are, the harder it is to find another weird bird like yourself to pair off with. At least, from were I sit it seems to be.

To be desperately in love you need to be, well, desperate. Something needs to be in peril around you. War helps a great deal with this. A huge event out of your control that threatens all you hold dear--oh ho! That'll get your blood, hormones, and everything else you got, boiling quick. Sure, we've got a war of our own going on now. Plenty of soldier's wives trying to hold down the fort here--but it's not like the world wars where we were sure of what we were fighting to protect and who the bad guys were. Now we're a lot of lost lambs in the wood. Hoping to be good, for whoever or whatever is watching over us. If there IS anything watching at all.

MithriDate

If there was some kind of potion one could take that would make one impervious to the feeling of rejection, I would be happy to be a test subject.

This was a big weekend, kids. 3 different match.com dates within 4 days. LOOK OUT! I'm on a rejection express train on track to Holiday Season approaching a suicide turn at a dangerous speed.

If I hear how awesome my personality is ONE more time...

I was thinking; I don't really know why people think telling someone that they're really REALLY, I mean so the totally awesomest person in the world, is going to somehow lessen the impact of their rejecting you. People only say that to make themSELVES feel better about the whole thing.

"It's not you. You're SO great. I mean, I don't want to lose you as a friend! You're such an incredible person. I would just be devastated if we couldn't be friends."

Well I guess you're gonna have to learn to live with devastation then, dick.

Why can't we just tell each other the truth? Would it be so horrible to be told by someone, "I'm just not attracted to you. Had a good time talking to you, though. Take care." If saying the actual words is too uncomfortable then maybe we could come up with a code system. You know, like how you can have a safe word when you're into BDSM.

Oh put your eyebrows back down, like everyone doesn't know where "safe word" comes from?

We could, instead of saying "I'm not attracted to you." You could just say, "Bologna sandwich." And if you WERE attracted you could say "I've got the pocket hots!"

Or we could just own up to our own feelings and tell other human beings what we're really thinking. Survey says!: errrruuuh! XXX

Rejection number one on Thursday night was very honest--albeit an honest txt the next morning, but still. Told me he didn't feel a romantic connection. Fair enough. Thanks for playing. And as an aside--I think a txt is totally fine in this circumstance. In fact, it's even preferred.

Rejection number two is still a bit up in the air. I may have handled myself poorly, though. Gave into the lust of the moment. Not that I gave away the farm...but I definitely gave him a detailed and extensive tour. There was even a complimentary overnight stay, though no breakfast. And upon leaving, my spot in bed was happily replaced by a 50 pound mutt named Henry. Not a terribly good sign, I fear. And I resent any man who makes the girl have to be the one to put on the brakes in the bedroom shenanigans. A friend of mine in Milwaukee--straight male friend mind you--never does more than kiss for the first handful of dates. Keep it simple. Keep it straightforward.

Rejection number three was a sleeper hit. We'd emailed 7 or 8 times over the past month--which is too much, if you ask me--and then we had a spur of the moment decision to "hang out". He dropped by for some homemade cookies, a little Bailey's on the rocks, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was a classic set up: movie ended, yawn, "look at that, 9:25 already, better be headed home", one armed hug, no eye contact, "talk to ya later". And fade to black.

I'm not trying to complain, actually. I like first dates and getting to know people. But it sure does take a FUCK of a lot of eggs to make une omlette d'amore.

ioDate

Under pressure. Wait, no, correction: Unda presh-ah.

So I just watched this flick called "Crossing Delancey". Aromcom from 88'. Think Sex in the City 80's style and jewish. Successful women in their mid-thirties scrounging the streets of New York for intelligent handsome bachelors that don't seem to exist. The main character is 33, works in a bookstore, and has intense delusions of grandeur. She's fucking a guy who has a wife, lusting after a arrogant author, and shunning an average dowdy jew pickle salesman. But she finds herself developing feelings for the pickleman almost against her will--after she tries to set him up with a friend of hers, that is...Then their burgeoning romance is witnessed by the arrogant author and all the sudden HE'S interested in our wishy washy heroine. Ugh. Does this really work? Is that really how it works? Game playing that is seemingly unconscious in its simplicity.

Disgusting.

Is it a fault of human nature that we don't understand something or someone's worth to us until we see how it is desired by others? Are we all destined to realize what we think we're settling for is really something we should feel lucky to have? That seems like mumbo jumbo to me. I thinking growing to love someone is a different kind of love than instant attraction. Isn't "growing to love" a fancy way of saying "learning to settle"?

I can maybe buy the possibility that you meet someone and feel one way about them (ie unattracted) and then weeks, months or even years later meet them again and it's baking soda and vinegar. But there has to be a separation--you don't hang around this person, become good friends with them and then all of the sudden see them in a different light. You don't go to bed feeling one way and wake up feeling another--I just don't buy it. We're our own worst enemy sometimes when it comes to this. You make a decision about a person--how you feel about them--and that decision sticks to you. It forms and cements how you view them. And once that form has been cemented...

Maybe I've just become callused over the years because of countless fruitless attempts with unrequited love. I've never had a "Some Kind of Wonderful" situation happen. No matter how amazing the object of my affection grew to think I was--it never turned into something romantic. This formula that I thought was fail safe for all these years: become the close friend and confidant of the man you desire and once he sees how great you are he'll fall helplessly in love with you--has always, ALWAYS, failed. You can't make yourself attracted to someone, I get that. All you can do is be honest about how you feel, and maybe try and understand WHY you feel the way you do. Don't hate yourself for loving someone who can't or won't love you back. Just accept it as a reality and try to move past it. Timing is everything. Chemistry is everything. Wishing doesn't bribe cupid's crooked arrow.

DilapiDate

So Match.com should really be called rejection.com. Being on one of these dating websites is worse than trying to make it as an actor. You've gotta have a strong constitution to get knocked down as much as you do in both scenarios. The similarity between the two is almost uncanny. Pour example:

Audition scenario:

Nationally syndicated Apple commercial, union, residual guarantees, possible launching pad for TV sitcom work or low brow comedies.

Date scenario:

5'11, dark hair, light eyes, one dimple, handsome, bearded, runs every morning, likes Vonnegut and Palahniuk but admits to perusing US Weekly when he's stuck working out in the gym. Great relationship with his family, has a creative job, enjoys board games, theme parties, and giving foot massages.

These, to me, are pretty equatable. (and fictitious) Both have the potential to change your life in wonderful ways. Both seem within the "realm of possibility" in, at least, my life. Preparation for the audition such a commercial and the first date with Quirky McDreamboat would be very similar. Lots of careful preparation would go into the grooming process. Hairs would be scraped off, plucked out, or coiffed. Facial enhancing paints would be applied to eyes, cheeks, and chin. Wardrobe would be meticulously planned out, tried on, worn around, put through possible positional scenarios, until just the right combination of unique, trendy, and feminine was achieved.

After said physical prep was complete, the mental psych up would begin. Deep breathing, brief mirror pep talk, and a mantra of "be yourself, be cool, be nice". Then you get in your car and go.

You present, you do your little song and dance, and usually come away feeling pretty confident and full of fizzy lifting drink. "That went well! I felt charming and sassy!" But then...nothing.

No call.

No txt.

Not interested. But without explanation either. And frustratingly of all...it's not that they weren't charmed, or amused, or even pleasantly surprised. It's just that there was something missing or someone a bit different or something easier. Someone they knew from a friend of a friend. Someone...else.

How do you stop yourself from obsessing over what it might have been that was not right, not enough about you for them. They seemed like enough to you. They held such promise. Gave you...the feelings. But nope, not this time. Maybe next time, yeah, next time. Next time it'll be the one. The big break. The big love.

Or not?