Archive for Relationships
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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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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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Why Do People Stay In Bad Relationships?
Aug 17, 2009 - Written by Onely | Filed under: Featured, Relationships
“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. We welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.
Dear Quirkyalone,
When a woman is in a relationship with a guy who everyone else can see is treating her badly, what goes on in the woman’s mind that prevents her from seeing these very same things? How does she qualify staying with this guy and why? What’s behind the excuses she makes for him?– Bobby
Hi Bobby,
This is an excellent question indeed. While I can’t claim to be able to speak for the woman in question, I can offer a few theories (which, as a side note, could be applied to either men or women, as well as lesbians and gay men):
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Zeitgeist | Defending Marriage . . . and Singledom
Aug 13, 2009 - Written by Deborah Hymes | Filed under: Featured, Pop Culture, Quirkytogether, Relationships, Single Life
You’d think it was the first time anyone’s ever gotten a divorce.
Sandra Tsing Loh’s recent admission in The Atlantic that she’s divorcing her husband after 20 years (following her own extramarital affair) has ignited a firestorm of high-minded controversy debating the pros and cons of marriage. The story was picked up nationally, with nearly all the major news outlets chiming in online, on air and in print.
The particular point of contention is Ms. Loh’s theory that perhaps the reason we have a divorce culture is because we marry too often. Citing “all the abject and swallowed misery” she observes in modern marriage, she wonders, “Why do we still insist on marriage?”
Then she really gets down to it, ending her polemic with a
“final piece of advice: avoid marriage—or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something as demonstrably fleeting as love.”
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The Truth About Me and Quirkyalone
Jun 21, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen | Filed under: Featured, Quirkytogether, Relationships, Single Life
Transparency is a major buzzword in Internet circles these days. It’s about sharing who you are through YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, enough to make you seem more real and a little vulnerable. Transparency is said to bring us closer together. In business and government, transparency theoretically makes institutions more accountable.
It’s strange to be a nonfiction writer who has always specialized in writing about culture through the prism of my own life now that everyone is sharing tidbits of their lives online. I’m suspicious of the belief that we should all be transparent. I know how carefully I and other nonfiction writers and memoirists consider which stories and details to share. We don’t tell them in real-time. It’s impossible to predict how careless sharing will haunt us in the future, whether in the workplace or a relationship.
But now I feel blocked, I decided to give the whole transparency thing a try. What’s the worst thing that can happen? If there’s anything I’m passionate about, it’s honest communication.
I have decided that it might be interesting to be more transparent at this moment about my tangle of ambivalence regarding quirkyalone ten years after originally writing an essay defining the term (and five years after publishing my book).
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Voila! The new quirkyalone.net!
Jun 13, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen | Filed under: Relationships, Website
Today I am oh so pleased to unveil the new, resdesigned quirkyalone.net!
The new site has been designed to showcase popular content so that when you land on the blog, there are easy ways to click and find more of what interests you. The changes include:
- Daily fresh content on the blog. Soon we’ll be adding new contributors writing on the single life, quirkytogether marriages, politics, pop culture, travel, and more.
- Top tabs surfacing the most popular and featured blog posts along with contributors and archives
- Sample chapters from the book
- Cool new galleries to display images, like those in the IQD party pack
- Threaded comments (now you can reply to someone else’s comment on a post)
Thank you to Randy Jones from Aquatoad Design for working with me on every last detail. Thanks also to Sara Cambridge, Matt Albiniak, and Bonni Evenson.
Please take a whirl around and leave comments with any bugs you find. I was eager to launch before I head to New York for a sure-to-be wacky and surreal Twitter event: the 140 characters conference, where I will be a “character.” In all the last-minute madness, I haven’t had time to do full QA on QA–so eager to hear about any bugs you find! Looking forward to your comments, feedback, and ideas and the continuing evolution of quirkyalone.net. xo Sasha
Are you a quirkyalone?
Quirkyalone: n. adj. a person who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and prefers being single to dating for the sake of dating. It’s a mindset. Quirkyalone is not anti-love. It is pro-love. It is not anti-dating. It is anti-compulsory dating. Quirkyalone is a book, a holiday, and a movement. Are you a quirkyalone? Take the quiz and read the original essay to find out.
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