My Suburban Destiny

1. Women you meet intially by email. The stigma associated with newspaper ads does seem to be lightened in the online version of personal ads, but I think it is in large part because it is so much easier to nix a relationship that started for a flimsly reason, like responding on a whim to an email. The alternative, meeting in real space, puts a higher burden getting involved (you may actually see the person again), and ditching, (well why did you get invovled int he first place if you weren’t somewhat serious?) Internet dating means it is costless to get out of a relationship–you’ll never see them again and it is easy to tell oneself that starting the relationship was a lark.
2. Women who are safe at home. I go to a lot of public (open membership) social groups, like church, special interest clubs, etc. I don’t see a lot of regulars. These kind of girls are easy to avoid because they aren’t there. You might run into them though, on the one time they get out of the house.
3. Women who can’t be influenced. I’m not talking about servility and obsequitiousness, I’m talking about someone who reacts hostily to advice, suggestions, ideas and opinions. Dr. Gottman says this is more likely to be a problem for men, but I wouldn’t know.

Non-warning signs.

Messed up people. As long as they are not a lot more messed up than you.

Unhealthy. As long as they aren’t in worse health than you.

One one hand, it seems that one would make few friends by speaking over-ill of oneself. On the other hand, I tired of potential dating situations where as soon as they find out about social resume blemishes, I’m a pariah.

So my new policy is bad news first. And here is the news:

I’ve a history of failed relationships. (Somehow this is only a negative if said failed relationships involved marriage)

I’ve already one son and I decided to keep part time custody. (I suppose this could be good or bad, I’ve heard it argued both ways. One theory is that single men with children have an easier time remarrying than women, the other theory is that women don’t want to be step-mothers. I think the latter is truer now-a-days, even though the step-mother is an obsolete institution. Modern girlfriends and wives of divorced fathers are more like aunts than step mothers.)

I’m INTP by Briggs Meyers. Except for geeks who wear INTP as a badge of honor, the INTP is not one of the charismatic alpha male personality types.

I own a cat. This is a positive my view, but just in case it is bad news, from now on everyone is going to have to hear about Marbles right away, lest we all waste our time only to realize that a friendship can’t bear the stress of cat dander.

And I’m overtired. Goodnight all.

Get message to move along. Delete emails. Delete phone entry. Delete any accidental references in blog. Delete memories from brain. Exorcise ghosts. Delete from conversations. Avert eyes if necessary.

Maintaining equanimity is really hard, especially equanimity about of anything of importance. I’ve learned that equanimity is easier to maintain when there is uncertainity about outcomes. Once outcomes are known, it’s hard to remain equally in that same state of being just as happy as if the outcome had been the reverse. It must be something about how the brain is wired at a low level.

Having struck out, now I need to decide if I should keep with my current strategy or modify it. I guess since my last strike out was with a match.com date, I can keep with my strategy of not touching online dating with a ten foot pole.

Evaluating my worth in the marriage market (or the long term relationship market) is tricker– does a strike out indicate I’m over priced (trying to date girls that I have no chance with, those with more charisma, wealth, life accomplishments, fewer social resume blemishes, better health and education) or if I’m just unlucky.

Also at this point one starts to think about fixes, fixes to ones social resume, etc. Fixes take time and it’s hard to say which ones are going to count in the end. And of course, wondering where things went wrong. It’s a narrow edge between wondering where I was tactless and unkind and what is wrong with me and still hard yet to decide if I actually did nothing wrong and was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What ever the case, I’m going to try to switch to the theory that people fall in love because they are thrown together with someone and just happen to spend a lot of time together. This eliminates all girls that don’t get out of the house on a regular basis and don’t go somewhere where they can be found on a regular basis.

Also a quick C.T. review

1. Am I filtering?

My last strike gained me two dates with a charming lady. That’s better than 0.

2. Am I polarizing my thinking?

My behavior was mixed–I probably was both socially clumsy but capable enough to go on two dates.

3. Am I overgeneralizing?

This strike out probably is a poor predictor of my success in future attempts to form relationships.

4. Am I mind reading?

I have extremely limited informaton on the lady was trying to date, so her true motives are truely mysterious.

5. Catastrophizing

This isn’t the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in world would be if I was dying face down in the gutter without a friend in the world, and without satallite radio or even high speed interent access.

6. Am I magnifying?

Dating is a numbers game, a strike out is meaningless unless you live on an island with only a few girls.

7. Am I personalizing?

She didn’t have enough time to get to know me, so she’s mostly reacting to who she suspects I am. I’m not evil. She might have some other very good reason for not wanting to get involved with anyone at the moment, not just myself.
8. Am I thinking in terms of shoulds?

No girl has to be my friend, they are all free agents and limited time available for socializing. I am what I am and I can’t expect myself to do what I think I should do, because thinking I should be more charismatic is arbitrary as thinking I should be able to fly.

Oh well, chapter over, man do I regret every signing up for match.com. Cognative principles be damned, no one should ever sign up for match.com.

It’s a concept, not yet an event.

I’ve got two meditation events on the calendar each week until my legs revolt, so I shouldn’t complain too much.

And someday I need to blog about if falling in love is like having OCD. Maybe I’ll start today. I’ve never had OCD or OCPD, so it is hard to say. Subjectively, it is somewhat about being fixated on someone. But it also feels like addrenaline, exciting and energizing. It feels like neurochemical confidence. Weeks before you consider the world rationally, as if it were a rather rough place to succeed, and bam, all of a sudden, there is no stopping. You hear a name, you see a face and you really want to seek it out like a phototropic plant. Okay, like a sunflower.

And, as odds are more likely than not, they don’t really share the sentiment? They start to drift into the ideals. Those you have fallen in love with are real as long as they are around, and when they just aren’t there, their flawlessness gets purified and they become a platonic ideal, as beatiful and blameless as a circle.

Now that is a platonic relationship.

A long time ago, I’d get just tremendous crushes on girls that there was no way I could follow up on for lack of a script and courage. I’m now trying out equanimity and compassion and it works. I wish her well, I feel the existential pain of her situation, I’m not attached to winning a relationship and I’m not adverse to a relationship failing to start.

Existential pain is the pain of being alive and not knowing why. I mean, not everyone is like me and already knows that as far as existential projects go, you don’t need anything else other than a lime flavored sugar cookies, a book club, family, satellite radio and phynalethylamine.

Recently I heard a girl discussion dating deal breakers and said a guy owning a cat was a deal breaker. (!)

Just because 36 year signle old women buy four cats a substitute or a psychological preventive to forming a family doesn’t mean that men buy cat’s to fufil their maternal instincts.

For your information, the cat is a much more a macho beast than given popularly credit. Speaking genetically, there is not a lot of difference among the wild cat, tiger and domestic cat. They are all stealthy, blood thirsty hunters that prey on the weak, the sick and anything smaller than themselves. You may think that your cat is friendly because you are a substitute mother, in fact, your cat merely has decided you are too big to take down.

Which doesn’t stop my cat from trying.

Danced Salsa, Sat Zen, Sat Vipassana, Sat around the camp fire, visited family and went to a potluck. Plus work & stuff. And I wonder why I’m tired. Not that I’m complaining.

I’m listening to a book call “Never eat lunch alone.” I’ve already noticed how inefficient I am at socializing. I forget people’s names, I don’t arrange times to see them again, I don’t have anything in particular in mind to offer people and I don’t have anything in particular in mind that I want to get.

I’ve started by just couting how many times I could have connected with someone and how many times I actually connected.

I’m also working on fixing my conversational style. I love factoids. To me, a conversation is an exchange of facinating factoids. Better conversationalists, for my purposes are those who can generate new and interesting factoids while talking.

I won’t talk about emotions, because, typically, my emotions are only some of the time full of confidence, joy and so forth. Probably like everyone, my emotions are a lot of blah, fear, sleepiness, and sometimes confidence and joy.

When talking to women, apparently, they want to hear about this emotion stuff, so I’m working on strategies to convey emotion–but without souding to harsh on myself either.

After all, I’m in the middle of limerance and I’m please to say that as of right now, despite all rational evaluation of the evidence, I’m full of hope, confidence, and joy.

This craiglist post is warning about some guy’s that’s going to Iceland.

“Guy going to ICELAND

Watch out for him…he is trouble!!! and I know this personally. Not worth your time or effort. “

Gee, I’m going to Iceland. I don’t know who this person is, but they got their facts all wrong. I’m anti-trouble, I solve problems, I’m an asset. Not only am I worth your time and effort, but I worth double your time and effort.

(I keep reading, appears they were talking about someone else)

I’m going to resume blogging for fame, and that means writing comments and blogrolling and I hear there is an active DC blogger meetup, which I now live rather close to.