All posts by Onely

Onely

Onely

Website: http://onely.org
Email: Contact Author
Bio: Onely is a blog that deconstructs stereotypes of singlehood. It's for singles who enjoy being single but remain open to a variety of romantic relationships, either for themselves or for others. Onely comprises two people: Lisa and Christina. Christina has an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing, but she still struggles with her participles and a tendency toward semicolon abuse. She has bravely persevered against these obstacles in her work as one-half of the Onely writing team. For most of her thirty-odd years she has been Quirkyalone, but she also has experience as a Quirkytogether, a Lonelyalone, and--most terrifying--a Lonelytogether. Currently she is contentedly single, balancing a left-brained day job that feeds her cat with right-brained writing projects that feed her soul. In Dear Quirkyalone, she hopes to share her lessons learned with other readers who want to understand and embrace Quirkyliving. The secret? Always listen to Lisa. Lisa has an MFA in creative writing and is about halfway through a doctoral program in Rhetoric and Composition. She loves writing about singles issues on Onely because it gives her a break from what she writes in “real life,” and she loves giving advice on QA because – as most academics do – she thinks she’s always right. Lisa owns a dog named Kitty, loves Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, and undertakes long road/camping trips as often as possible. She apologizes in advance for her language taking “academic” (not to be confused with “epic”) proportions, and advises readers first and foremost to always heed Christina’s advice.

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Dear Quirkyalone: The Laws of Chemistry

Dec 07, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Relationships

“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a guest column by Lisa and Christina (crossposted at Quirkyalone). When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. Quirkyalone and Onely welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

I have gone out on 4 dates with a guy.  We have a great time together, but I’m not feeling any chemistry.  Is chemistry always an instant feeling or can it come along later? –Aimee

Hi Aimee,

Thanks for your classic question. A key tenet of Quirkyalones (or Quirkytogethers!) is that we enjoy spending time on our own, and so we won’t commit to any romantic relationship unless our partner really makes us go, “Wow!”  Not as in, “Wow, I can’t believe how long his nose hair grows,” but rather, “Wow, how did I get so lucky to meet and connect with this person who makes me all tingly and goofy?”  For Quirkyalones, chemistry is a must–but what is it, and how do we recognize it?

Like all classic questions, this one is difficult and has no clear answer, except for maybe “It  all depends,” which I won’t say because that’s the world’s most annoying response (albeit always the truest). So let me break “It all depends” down into some arbitrary specifics for you. I believe that there are approximately three kinds of “chemistry”:

Type 1 Chemistry: Slam-click at first sight.

Type 2 Chemistry: Slam-click after a series of interactions, where you recognize attractive aspects of the person that were not apparent at first sight, and respond to them emotionally or physically.

Type 3 Chemistry: Intermittent giddy feeling that stems from recollections of and references to a long history together and which could not be provided by a recent love interest (think of a couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary walking on the beach hand in hand).  We will not discuss Type 3 in this post.

In your situation, it’s not a bad thing that you didn’t immediately feel the SLAM-CLICK of Type 1 Chemistry. However, I think that four dates is probably enough time to start SLAM-CLICKing in the style of Type 2, where you discover that your date has a great laugh and a fascinating knowledge of 18th century Czech watercolors, and you can barely keep your hands off him whenever he tells a Tuvia Beeri anecdote. If this doesn’t happen, then you might have made a new friend, but not a Chemical friend. If you really want to click with your date, but you don’t feel the Chemistry, try giving him chances to generate that connection. For example, if you admire artistic men but the last time he touched an easel was with fingerpaints, don’t just assume he can’t match your interest. Ask him to a paint-your-own-pottery studio and see how he engages with the project. He may surprise you!

I would be more concerned if you said you had instant chemistry from the very second you first bumped into each other at the gallery. This Type 1 Chemistry is fun, but you should take it with a grain of salt. Here’s why: it’s hard to tell the difference between a real connection and a connection manufactured by your brain’s subconscious reaction to the other person’s smell, look, voice, and mannerisms. For example, you exchange hellos with Steve and immediately like him. A lot. What are you basing your opinion on? Your subconscious brain carries a plethora of data it uses to make sense of the world, which it then feeds to your reasoning mind. To give a simplistic example: Steve’s nose might resemble the nose of a beloved aunt who died when you were four years old. Your subconscious remembers your aunt’s face and tells your thinking mind, “A nose like this once belonged to a nice person who gave me cookies,” but the message garbles in translation to your conscious, which hears, “Steve has a nice nose–I can’t wait to eat his cookies.” SLAM-CLICK. It’s a powerful illusion. Enjoy it, but don’t expect it to inevitably carry over into Type 2 Chemistry, which is what you want if you’re aiming for a long term relationship.

If any readers out there *are* feeling Type 1 Chemistry, don’t panic. It might be for real! Test it: Try to articulate why you are drawn to this person. List certain attributes that appeal to you, rather than “She makes me feel all giddy, full stop.” For example,  “She makes me feel giddy because she can untangle a Gordian knot,” bodes well. “She makes me feel giddy because of something about her,” might also bode well, but it could just as easily bode badly. It all depends.

–Christina

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Dear Quirkyalone: Send Us Your Questions and Concerns, Compliments and Complaints!

Sep 21, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Personal Growth, Quirkytogether, Single Life

Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving is a weekly guest column by Lisa and Christina at the singles’ advocacy blog Onely. Our column appears here every Monday — but we’re running low on questions!

So, dear readers: Do you have dilemmas, conundrums, burning (or mundane) questions about quirkyaloneness and quirkytogetherness? What questions do you have about optimum quirkyliving? What’s come up in your life recently where you could use some advice, a pep talk, or maybe even some tough love? When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you — and more importantly, we want to HEAR from you!

Please send your questions and concerns, compliments and complaints to: onely AT onely.org

In the meantime, Happy National Singles’ Week! We’re celebrating with a blog crawl sponsored by Single Women Rule — check it out!

– Lisa and Christina

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Dear Quirkyalone: Where are all the Quirkyalone men?

Sep 14, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Single Life

“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a weekly guest column by the authors of the brilliant blog Onely. It appears every Monday. When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. Quirkyalone and Onely welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

Dear Quirkyalone,

Why are there so many more Quirkyalone women than Quirkyalone men? –Cynthia

Dear Cynthia,

Let me start by saying that the Quirkyalone movement–and the singles’ advocacy movement in general–needs and wants more men. More men! More single men’s blogs! More single men commenting on blogs! More single men writing about, talking about, thinking about, and waving a banner for Quirkyaloneness. The concept of being happily single and not settling is not unique to women.

While not unique t0 women, the experience of being able to hold out for one’s dream man or woman (and being ok if that person never comes) is a relatively new experience for them. For most of this history of the human race, females were usually forced to settle. What choice did they have? They were not fully allowed into the workforce or given control over their own finances, inheritances, birth control, etc. Sometimes they even did more than settle: they connived, competed, and prostrated in order to snag a man, any man, who: wanted them; could feed and clothe them; could care for the children the woman would inevitably conceive. If the woman had luck, she married someone who refrained from abusing her out of his own moral sense, so she didn’t have to rely on the vagaries of a patriarchal law system to protect her.

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Dear Quirkyalone: Why am I less remarkable to sober people?

Sep 07, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Dating, Friendship, Personal Growth

“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a weekly guest column by the authors of the brilliant blog Onely. It appears every Monday. When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. Quirkyalone and Onely welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

Dear Quirkyalone: I’m a Quirkyalone from SF, kinda floating between school and not school right now, and I was wondering: I often feel like the rest of my generation of college aged folks is only interested in interacting with one another while drunk. In recent exchanges at parties, I find that I am remarkable to my drunk acquaintances, yet less so on days after when they become sober. Why do you suppose that is?  – Gian

Dear Gian,

In order to answer your question, I’m going to make two assumptions:

1) that your new acquaintances were not simply too drunk to remember you afterward; and

2) that when you say “in days after” you’re not talking about “the morning after”.

I think you already know that you can’t use a person’s drunk personality as a barometer for how they’ll treat you in the sober times.  Now with that caveat out of the way, let’s look a little deeper:

Drunk people are likely to be more interested in anyone and everything. That’s why people drink–to see the world in new ways. Or maybe that’s LSD. But in any case, when your drunk interlocutor told you, “Gee, your worm farm sounds just fascinating,”  he (we’ll assume he’s a he) may very well have meant it. Alcohol suppresses activity in the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain responsible for planning and decision making. So at the time of your conversation, his impaired prefrontal cortex caused him to “forget” or overlook how much worms remind him of some unfortunate experiments on the playground in middle school,  or the fact that dirt in his fingernails gives him the willies. But when his brain sobered up, the realization that he’s not really that into mulch and compost came blasting back into his consciousness, along with the headache. Hence his decision, “I guess I won’t call that nice worm girl after all.” 

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