Quirkyalone

Brazilian and Single? Today Is Your Day!

Aug 15, 2011 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Travel

Today is the official day to celebration singledom in Brazil. Feliz Dia dos Solteiros! I found out when a Brazilian Facebook friend posted a photo of himself cooking alone and called it his “Feliz Dia dos Solteiros” photo! I spent six months of 2010 in Brazil and can testify that there is a growing consciousness among young men and women who prefer to be single rather than settle for a lackluster (or untrustworthy) relationship. Brazilians are also driven by passion and that fits with the quirkyalone penchant for passionate relationships. My book Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics was released in Brazil. Here is the Brazilian quirkyalone twitter account which has inspirational tidbits from my book Quirkyalone in Portuguese. Love.

My Portuguese language teachers, me, and my fellow student, enjoying our very own SoSingular

My friend Laura informed me that South Korea has a National Singles Day too on June 14. Single people get together on “Black Day” to eat noodles with black bean sauce.

Worried About Growing Old Alone? Don’t!

Jul 12, 2011 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Uncategorized

Most people fear growing old alone. Research shows senior singles are among the most satisfied singles: “Older singles (ages 65 and over) report the greatest level of happiness over the past 12 months, followed by 21-24 year olds.” Check out the full findings in this fascinating match.com report.

Sex and the Single Celiac

Jun 05, 2011 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Dating, Sex

Future boyfriends: take note. When we kiss your kisses must be gluten-free. As a newly diagnosed celiac, I am entering into dating terrain that few can imagine. And I am just making sense of it in writing this post.

Celiac is an autoimmune condition triggered by even the most minute amount of gluten. Gluten is a protein found in barley, rye, (most) oats, and wheat. Think bread, and think of a thousand other products. I can’t eat a bread crumb (or a tiny amount of bread, beer, pizza, soy sauce, fake crab, gluten-containing ice cream). Gluten is in an amazing array of products, and the possibility of cross-contamination makes many products unsafe.

Navigating life as a celiac is complicated, especially in the United States where the FDA is three years late issuing even minimal guidelines to manufacturers on safe limits for “gluten-free” products. I’ve blogged about this issue on the Huffington Post. This issue is even trickier when it comes to dating. Guess what? You can get contaminated from kissing someone who has eaten gluten (and that scenario would be quite common on a date, all it takes is a swill of beer!).

Normally we save awkward conversations about “safe sex” to later in the relationship. But for a celiac it’s critical to talk about “safe kissing.”

Most celiacs posting in forums are married or already have committed partners. So they have only one person to educate. But it’s an entirely different situation if you are meeting someone new. I’ve had one date so far where I didn’t spend half the date talking about celiac. The guy went in for a kiss and I had to brush him aside telling him we would have to wait until we had talked about celiac. He was clearly confused. Later I sent some links.

I’ve googled extensively to find out whether celiacs get sick from kissing someone who has consumed gluten, and although research hasn’t been done on the effects of saliva on gluten, the consensus from the field in forums is yes. Kissing is not something I am going to give up, but getting sick is also not OK; for me, it means being a zombie for a week and over time dramatically increasing risks of getting cancer, osteoporosis, and other autoimmune disease.

Here are the most common tips:
*ask your date to brush his or her teeth before kissing you
*ask your date to not consume anything containing gluten for a few hours before kissing
*ask your date to rinse with water before going in for a smooch
*if you’re dating a woman, ask her to wear gluten-free lipstick
*if you’re dating a man, ask him to brush gluten crumbs from his moustache!

Spontaneous, no? Sweet and romantic? Yes. Being celiac and defining your needs means your date has to value you to kiss you.

Here’s looking forward to some passionate gluten-free kisses. Step one in this video is also to brush and floss. And hey, it’s never a bad idea to brush and floss.

The Long-Awaited YouTube: State of Sex and Dating in San Francisco

Apr 22, 2011 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Events, Sex, Single Life, technology

At long last, here’s the Commonwealth Club’s panel discussion on “The State of Sex and Dating in San Francisco.” I took part and so did three other insightful San Francisco thinkers Ethan Watters (Author, Urban Tribes); Nicole Daedone (Founder, OneTaste; Author, Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm) and N.W. Smith (Contributor, The Bold Italic).

One big theme was the sense of disconnection that people often feel in a big city now that we are all staring into our iPhones on public transportation. The moderator Violet Blue joked that’s how geeks flirt. I miss good old-fashioned eye contact.

After the panel a woman came up to me and told me she wanted to start a movement where people identify themselves as available for human contact and chatting in some way on BART trains (BART is the Bay Area’s subway system). As in wearing a feather, a handkerchief, a button. Something like that.

I’m open to all kinds of ideas because I think random contact with strangers is the most effervescent part of living in a dense area.

The State of Sex and Dating in San Francisco

Mar 09, 2011 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Events

I will be speaking on a Commonwealth Club panel called “The State of Sex and Dating in San Francisco” on Thursday, 3/31. The topic of online dating is sure to come up in this online-dating-drenched, tech-obsessed city. So will the “slow sex movement” as I will be sharing the panel with Nicole Daedone, creator of “the fifteen minute orgasm” (which *I think* has something to do what what she calls “orgasmic meditation”) and the founder of One Taste, a center focused on female sexuality. Ethan Watters author of Urban Tribes will also be part of the conversation. Come on down! The program will also be broadcast on KALW, one of our NPR affiliates, and posted on YouTube.

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.