Quirkyalone

The Disposable Dating Syndrome

Nov 04, 2010 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Dating

Note: I wrote this post a year ago while I was still in the United States (and not traveling in South America), but realize that it should have been posted all along, so here it is! At the end is a postscript written from the perspective of my year traveling outside the U.S.

On a recent work trip to New York, the same conversation came up over and over again. People who didn’t know about Quirkyalone kept telling me that dating in New York was brutal. I was sort of shocked. I am so used to complaining about the brutality of dating in San Francisco and have become quite self-conscious about my complaints, wondering if it’s just me complaining or creating my own reality with a negative outlook. I was psyched, in a way, to cede the floor to another legion of people telling me how brutal it was to date in their town.

San Francisco is a city with an embarassment of riches in terms of the dating pool, but somehow, with so many people to choose from, we develop an ADD mentality.

It’s a disposable dating culture. we meet people online or off, go out, make out or sleep together (maybe), and may never speak again. It’s on to the next person without acknowledgment of the conversation or the kiss or the sex, or the promises made of how what we would do in the future. I have been complaining about the brutality of disposable-dating in San Francisco for a while now. I’m not saying that I am blameless in this regard either, whatever that would mean. I am simply pointing out that we have a consumer mentality when it comes to dating.

Perhaps this is just the nature of dating, but I can’t help but believe that online dating, in the way it dramatically increases the possibilities for easily meeting someone new, makes us treat each other more disposably. We operate outside the constraints of a moral community of friends and family, and it’s so easy to disappear into the ether, only to cross each oher when you see each other “online now” on match.com.

So imagine my surprise and satisfaction on a recent trip to New York City to hear people complain even more vociferously about the struggle of dating in their own city. Listening to people tell me unsolicitedly how hard it was to date in New York, I thought, Wow, maybe it’s actually worse here! In fact, one man in his mid-thirties, CEO of his own company, told me he was moving to San Francisco because he couldn’t find “l’amour” in New York. (He was French.)

Here’s a snapshot of what I heard. Much of the discussion focused on Manhattan. It’s easy to talk about one slice of New York and think you’re talking about all of it.

• A married woman who writes about dating for Yahoo interviews singles for a living  says that people date differently in Manhattan. She used to live in San Francisco. They’re more driven and businesslike in their approach to dating in New York, she said. They make quicker judgments. (Gosh, I thought people made snap judgments here?) She believe that the New Yorker driven nature makes it harder for people to mate, but it is a fun place to be single because people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s have so much company.

• An entrepreneur in his thirties told me women judge quickly on the basis of his wallet. He told me they try to suss out his economic status, subtly or not: Does you have roommates? He also thought that women in New York weren’t very interested in sex, only money. I thought New York had more sexual energy than San Francisco. Most people I know in Brooklyn say it’s easy to find someone to sleep with, and hard to find a guy who will buy you a drink.

• A writer friend concurred that his dating life had slowed down in New York. He said New York can encourage a feeling of inadequacy, that there’s always someone who is more impressive. He concurred that there’s a velvet ropes kind of feeling in Manhattan, people always peering in to find someone more successful, richer, more beautiful. He also thought the geography of the city makes romance awkward. When you end a date, you say goodbye on the street or at a subway stop. You don’t get to make out in a car or a living room!

What to make of all of this?

The common theme in the complaints I heard in New York seemed to boil down to economics. That people are always looking for someone with more money. It made me reflect back on San Francisco, that people are always on a quest for a better fit, but just as often, to find  someone who’s a little more extraordinary and genius, an entrepreneur, an artist, somehow visionary and special. I remember a French guy telling me that his American friend who worked at Google felt that way, that women always wanted someone more extraordinary. That might have a ring of truth to it.

What can we do to combat the disposable dating syndrome? One word: acknowledgment. Even if you don’t have the patience or desire to get to know someone, at least you can acknowledge your date’s existence with an email, or heaven forbid, a phone call. You can not simply disappear. You can tell them one thing you liked about them even if you are not a romantic match.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, and frankly, I’m writing this final paragraph now after a year of traveling and distance from San Francisco. I’ve decided I don’t want to participate in online dating at all because of the consumer mentality that inevitably develops. But I’m open to hearing your ideas about how to lessen the brutality of the online dating game. How do you handle it if you go out with someone once and then decide it’s not a (potential) fit? Please share in the comments.

Radically Honest Online Dating

Sep 16, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Dating, Featured, Quirkytogether

Welcome to the online candy store of love, our dystopic world of disposable dating. Internet dating can become an exercise in ego stroking and gratification, getting emails and winks about how pretty and wonderful you are. It can be a perpetual dip into window shopping for love, rather than a means to an end of actually meeting someone and patiently getting to know them. Find a flaw, and it’s on to the next person.

In cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, where online dating has been destigmatized, it’s easy to meet someone new for drinks, much harder but to build a relationship that spans longer than four dates. So perhaps the answer is not to shy away from online dating, but to transform it.

Perhaps one solution is Radically Honest Online Dating (RHOD). The idea came to me, as most ideas do, from a conversation with a friend.

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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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Dear Quirkyalone: Am I Too Picky?

Aug 31, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Dating, Featured, 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: Are single people over a certain age too picky? Is that so wrong? – Special K

Dear Special K,

Here’s my short answer: No, and No.

But to be more specific:

First, I’d like to consider the phrase “too picky.” The way I see it, being “picky” is not in and of itself a “bad” thing, though our culture often seems to say so. Let’s say we’re talking about food: If you order the specialty burger at your favorite restaurant that comes loaded with toppings – in this case bacon, blue cheese, arugula, avocado, and mushrooms – but the taste and texture of mushrooms make you want to puke, it’s pretty reasonable to ask for the burger without the mushrooms. If you are too shy, uncertain, or simply unaware to articulate this taste, you’ll likely leave the restaurant dissatisfied and/or hungry.

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Zeitgeist | Imaginary Bitches (A Review)

Aug 28, 2009 - Written by Deborah Hymes  |  Filed under: Dating, Featured, Friendship, Movies, Pop Culture, Relationships, Single Life, Video

Choosing to remain single in a coupled world is sometimes a lonely gig, never more so than when all of your close friends are smugly cocooned in their couple-bubbles. It can make you feel like the last single person on Earth.

As once-single friends morph into couples, it often becomes irritatingly apparent that they no longer understand the challenges or  perspectives of singledom. You sometimes feel like hitting them over the head, yet you still love them and yearn for common ground to maintain your friendships. This painful conflict is played out to hilarious effect in the engaging Web series Imaginary Bitches.

Eden is the last single girl in her circle of friends, refusing to compromise her standards simply to have a boyfriend. After an amazing date with a guy she really likes, Eden calls each of her friends to share her exciting news, but they’re only interested in talking about their relationships. Increasingly dispirited with each aborted call, Eden discovers, to her astonishment, that she has conjured an imaginary friend named Catherine—a friend who’s avidly interested in discussing all the details of Eden’s date.

But Catherine proves to be less a “friend” than a total bitch, with something nasty to say about Eden and all of her real girlfriends. That’s right, Eden herself is not exempt from Catherine’s bitchiness. Furthermore, Catherine is soon joined by a second imaginary bitch named Heather. The imaginary bitches quickly establish their presence in all of Eden’s relationships, leaving her to deal with the fallout even as they help her sort out her friendships and her love life.

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Is it me or is Christian Carter of “Catch Him and Keep Him” the devil?

Dec 09, 2008 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Dating

Have you ever gotten sucked into something that you were also ashamed to read? It happened to me yesterday. I was listlessly checking my email when I noticed a text ad that I must have seen more than 10,000 times. “How to catch and keep a man.” Those ads are as oddly ubiquitous as the text link ads for Acai Berry Wonder Diets, but I always assumed that ads with links like “Why Men Withdraw and What to Do About It” were for women who are more pathetic and malleable than me. Yesterday I joined the masses. And let me tell you. I became sickly fascinated. And angry.

I was vulnerable to that horrible ad because I recently heard something along the lines of “I’m just looking for something casual.” Somehow I find that impossible not to take personally. I clicked on the link–”The Ten Most Dangerous Mistakes Women Make”–and found myself swimming through simple, one-sentence direct-mail style paragraphs, like:

“Have you ever slept with a guy very quickly after meeting him, but as it started to happen you got that sinking feeling in your stomach? You knew it was a mistake, but you did it anyway. And then the thing you KNEW would happen actually happened: He unexplainably disappeared from your life. Honestly, have you ever had this happen?”

Of course, the worst part wasn’t that it happened, but that you KNEW you shouldn’t have done it in the first place… but you did it anyway.

Ummm, who hasn’t?

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