"... those [women] whose partners were most symmetrical enjoyed a significantly higher frequency of orgasms during sexual intercourse than those with less symmetrical mates.
"Handsome men know this firsthand. Studies show that symmetrical men have the shortest courtships before having sexual intercourse with the women they date. They also invest the least time and money on their dates. And these handsome guys cheat on their mates more often than do guys with less well-balanced bodies.
"This is not what we women would like to believe. Instead, we like the bonding hypothesis which says that women with kind, caring mates will have the most orgasms. But the reality is that men may just come in two different categories. There are the ones for hot sex and the ones for safety, comfort and child-rearing. Women are constantly longing for both wrapped into one package, but sadly science shows that this may be wishful thinking."
-From The Female Brain, by Louann Brizendine, M.D.
Here we go. I need to publicly come clean about something. I have been sucked into the world of online dating. I'm not proud of this new dabbling of mine... dabbling that, alas, seems to be spinning itself into a full-blown anthropological fascination. I'll add myself to the ranks of frustrated career-minded women who've declared that they never, ever thought their curiosity would get the best of them and drive them to databases in secret, embarrassed hopes of finding some desperately needed intimacy. The irony is astounding... reaching out to complete strangers across divides both technological and geographical, in an effort to connect with another living, breathing human being. Intimacy is what reminds us that we're truly human. I'm seeking validation of my own humanity by sitting in front of a machine for hours, typing. Scanning through thousands of pixels, excavating for some impression of emotional truth. It's totally and completely bizarre. An oxymoronic concept.
And yet, millions of people are meeting this way. A girl I knew a million years ago from doing community theater in Vista, CA recently friended me on Facebook. A quick scan of her profile and I discovered that she was married and living in the midwest, after meeting her husband on eHarmony.com while he was in school and she was teaching English in China. The courted on Skype, and were already emotionally committed to each other by the time they met in person for the first time 6 months after being matched up online.
Freaky, right?
The online revolution never ceases to confuse, titillate and frighten me. My generation was the first to grow up with this kind of technology at our fingertips, and now as new generations evolve, we're all growing more and more distant from each other. It's a conundrum to me: the entire world is literally at our fingertips every single day, and yet we sit isolated in our homes, each glued to our own individual screen, communicating through snippets of text, video and picture, forming entire relationships with people we've never shared the same air with. Are we mover closer together as a species or farther apart?
My own personal journey into the ether of eRomance has come 180 degrees since my first trepidatious logon to OkCupid.com in late November. My friend Dan introduced me to the site on his iPhone one evening over sushi in the West Village. "See, it quantifies your compatibility with another person, so you can find people with similar interests and values. It takes away the random guesswork" he explained. Now, Dan and I are very different types of creative. He is a techno-geek, type-A, aesthetic-obsessed web designer/entrepreneurial hopeful. Symmetry and the ability to quantify commodities are of utmost importance to him. Whereas I'm much more adaptable to chaos theory. "But Dan," I said, " I just don't believe it's possible to predict chemistry, no matter what percentage of your interests and values match up. Chemistry, unlike common interests or intellectual compatibility, is totally random."
"All I'm saying is, it wouldn't hurt you to put yourself out there. You don't want your vagina to get cobwebs, after all."
"Please don't ever say anything like that to me ever again."
The next day, I was called out of work. It was cold and rainy outside, so I decided to stay in bed all day and, well... Dan's offensive words still echoing in my brain, my curiosity got the best of me.
The first two weeks I was hooked. OkCupid is like the Facebook of the dating world. It's free, it's mostly self-determined, there is all kinds of gimmicky, procrastination-inducing shit to play with... plus, the advent of being able to see who's out there is intoxicating. There are so many factors to weigh when sorting through potential candidates: besides the obvious (attractive pictures, appealing height/weight/occupation/location), there is selection/creativity of photos and information, grammar/syntax/spelling, creativity of usernames... I found myself quickly compiling a mental list of pet peeves: guys who use their actual first names as user names (i.e. Adam4562904), guys whose self-summaries start with "I'm an easy-going, laid back guy...", guys who post shirtless pics and/or pics of themselves in muscle tees (ew. Only acceptable on gay men. And maybe not even then.) I'll admit, I can be very judgmental, often judging a book by its cover. Being a girl, OkC gave me an acute appreciation of how much control we ladies have over our dating lives. Turns out, there are a lot of dudes out there who find me, or at least the online possibility of me, worth their time (and money.) Men truly are the chasers and women the choosers. I couldn't be happier with those circumstances, myself.
here was something that seemed very active about online dating. Like I was defying natural odds of meeting someone, and taking matters into my own hands. How many people out there might I be compatible with but never chance to meet? I'm a control freak about my life--it's difficult for me to leave things up to faith and luck.
Then something completely unexpected happened. I met someone. His username was SuperHeroPowers and his entire profile was written in the persona of a superhero, revealing not one real fact about himself. His pictures, like mine, were quirky and obscured, revealing just a glimpse of potential hotness. He was clever, funny, creative and not taking the online thing, or himself, very seriously. We happened to give each other's profiles 4 out of 5 star ratings and then one night we started to chat at 2 am. We chatted for nearly 2 hours, and learned real things about each other. He turned out to be a very genuine guy, out there to see what there was to see. I've never been much of an outward romantic, and I've never been one to seek out boyfriend material, and something about our mutual open-minded aloofness clicked... loudly. A few more chats later, and I was completely intrigued. When he IMed me one morning and spontaneously asked me out, my heart leaped... I was dying to discover whether or not the virtual butterflies I had developed from our online correspondence would materialize into real ones upon meeting him.
We had the most kickass first date. Low key, spur of the moment, no pressure... meeting up at a tiny bar, going to his friend's loft for an art opening, then following his friends to a super lame party... where he kissed me as some drunk hipsters on the balcony above us dumped full cups of sticky boozy beverage square on top of our heads. At 3am we stumbled out to split a cab to our respective Brooklyn neighborhoods, and I discovered that my wallet was gone. We retraced our steps, but it was nowhere to be found. So he gave me some cash for the cab ride, and when I tried to insist I'd repay him when we met up as planned a few days later for our second date, he would hear nothing of it. A day later, we were chatting online and he told me he'd deleted his OkC profile. I was planning on deleting mine, but I held off... just in case. Two amazing dates later, I deleted mine too, admitting, when the site prompted me to reveal the reason for my departure, that I'd met someone on the site.
Four months later. It had been a short, but very meaningful roller coaster ride. Things had been amazing and perfect for the first 2 months. Then, as our individual lives began to challenge us more and more, he began to pull away from me. His infatuation waned, and though we still had a fun together and were extremely comfortable with each other and cared for each other truly, he became aloof, determined to keep our dating status casual, despite the fact that we'd been seeing each other exclusively the entire time. As our wants and needs drifted further and further apart, it became clear to me that it wasn't going to work, so I called it off.
This was the closest I'd ever come to having a real, grown-up relationship. I wondered if I was foolish and naive to think it could develop into something more, or worse, that I was foolish and naive to feel like our time together had been so meaningful to me... so much more than it had been for him, I imagined. Ugh. Before I knew it, the glimmer of intimacy had slipped through my straining fingers, and I found myself back in my stubborn, workaholic, hopelessly independent life. Changed of course, and truly for the better, but... isolated. Again.
And so I went back online.
I know it was totally stupid of me to hope that I'd log on and bam! lightning would strike twice, and I'd find someone who wanted me to care for them, and who wanted to care for me in return, someone to assuage the sting of disappointment and rejection. But I was lonely and my judgement was clouded by my wounded pride.
I signed up for Match.com's 3-day free trial. Within the first hour of my profile being up (with pics, of course), I had received 15 emails and 25 winks. My ego surged and I thought... well, I suppose I could stay on... it's only an extra $25 a month... and as my roommate Richard noted, I could easily earn that back in free dinners.
Match is way more intense than OkC, I imagine because you have to pay for it. Those dudes are looking for commitment with a capital C. The problem became clear very quickly: that I wasn't necessarily looking for commitment myself. I had wanted commitment from Josh, but not just for commitment's sake... I had developed feelings for him. In the real world, outside of my dreamy little faux-relationship, I wasn't necessarily looking to settle down. I have no desire to get married any time in the next decade, I don't want someone to tie me down to any particular location, I desperately need massive amounts of alone time...I'm a very autonomous person by nature. I dig being by myself...I am excellent company. But suddenly, the great importance of intimacy had been revealed to me. I'd had a taste of how much better I could be... how my body physically thrived from regular physical closeness. I have a ton of amazing friends who I can call when the earth seems to be splitting beneath me, but I'd never had someone hold me in the middle of the night when I broke down in tears from the weight of my own existential crises. It was literally like a drug, and without it I was in serious withdrawal. All the strength and confidence I'd developed in four months of playing "girlfriend" seemed to bleed right out through my pores. I'd spontaneously weep out all the good, self-loving energy in the middle of the N train on the ride home from rehearsal. I still don't want to be joined to anyone's hip, but my heart and soul are crying out for intimate connection to another's. They just can't grow by themselves. My heart and soul feel stunted, unable to move forward into any new understanding of myself and the world around me. There is only so much one can learn on one's own.
I've always had this tendency to seek knowledge the safe way. Sometimes I wonder if I should have skipped college altogether and dived right into my acting career, flying by the seat of my pants, falling on my face every single day and picking myself up again. After all, no one needs a degree to be an artist. But college was safe, predictable. Structured. I've always had a terrible fear of failure, and a desperate desire to do things the "right" way. I get totally preoccupied with figuring out what the "right" way is, that I lose sight of what really matters to me, what really inspires me, rather than the path that is going to gain the most approval from others. It recently struck me that I really have no idea what my path is. This whole time, I've been on the path that seemed right in theory. A path that was impressive to my parents and my peers. A path that was logical and well-paved, that seemed to make sense. But how often does art ever make sense? Being an artist is a reckless decision, a foolish choice that determines a life of chaos, longing and painful, painful beauty. Did my silly little self actually believe that my path could be so straightforward?
In the last week of my romantic entanglement, I started reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I usually avoid bestsellers as a rule, but one of my former UArts summer program students recommended it to me and the next day I bought it. I don't know why... all of my best friends have read it and loved it, but a girl I knew for a month two years ago recommends it and I buy it? It seemed... right. I don't know. I quickly became hooked and finished the thing in a week, a few days after I ended things with Josh. It's so predictably like me... to seek answers in a book. (A few weeks later, I buy The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, MD. I read it in five days: finally, some chemical answers to why communicating with men is so completely maddening! And why they find communicating with me to be so maddening! More to come on this subject in the future...) Did I find answers? Well, I found things to meditate on in a healthy way. There really are no answers to help us overcome fear, rejection and disappointment. But there are antidotes: gratitude, faith and love. Gratitude for the lessons I've learned. Faith in that I will continue to learn. And love for the people in my life who have helped me to learn these lessons, and also love for myself, for being brave enough to learn.
I've faced a lot of disappointment in my life. It seems that everyone in my family is constantly disappointing each other. The problem is that we all love each other so fiercely, with such intensity, that we end up with such high expectations of each other. We have some seriously intelligent, idealistic, passionate, attractive, talented genes buzzing around, and we all believe so strongly in each other's capabilities, that any misstep seems earth-shattering... but you have so much potential! How could you not live up to it?? This is the way I was brought up. This is why I'm such an over-achiever, falling into the depths of despair when things don't go the way I imagined them, the way I worked so hard to steer them.
"The Bhagavad Gita... says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection" writes Gilbert.
Some of these mornings I wake up and I know, inherently, that my life will continue to be full of heartbreak. My heart is sensitive... it bruises so easily. I know it will never break into so many pieces that I won't be able to stitch it back together. Because not only does my heart bruise easily, but it fills easily too. I'm working on learning that letting your heart fill does not have to be scary. In the past I've been afraid to let it fill too much, for fear that someone will come along and spill it's contents all over the place, or suck them dry and leave me hollow. But I know that's not true. My heart is self-replenishing. It's in a state of refilling as we speak... it's like my toilet tank lately, when it starts to refill, and stops short, running until I notice it's stalled. Then I reach in, jiggle some stuff around, and it fills again. My heart needs a little tinkering to get it refilling again. So I'm working on it.
In the meantime, I'm off Match and back to OkC for now... I'm sure I'll tire of it shortly, but for now, I'm being selective and keeping an open mind. I like that people on OkC have fewer expectations. They're just there to see what there is to see. A number of the guys I talked to on Match were just too conventional for me. They had stable, steady jobs, made good money, many of them had derailed artistic aspirations... good guys. Kind-hearted, stable guys. A surprising number of good-looking guys. Last week I went on a date with a guy who was just the type of guy you'd want to marry: good looking, funny, smart, kind, kind of dorky... the guy who's still pining over the one that got away. The guy who will most certainly get over her (because she's obviously not the devoted, conventional girl he wishes she was) and meet someone simpler, softer, someone who will appreciate his sweet honesty, without exploiting it, and they'll get married and live happily ever after. I am clearly not the girl for this guy. I'm the girl who, if I decide to give him a chance, will undoubtedly bruise his heart when I fall for someone chaotic, unstable, afraid of commitment, unavailable, but exciting, challenging, and oh-so-sexy. I think that's just where I'm at. I crave a good challenge. I embrace a little drama here and there. I want intimacy and comfort with a guy who can't provide it... a guy who craves it himself, but is desperate to hang onto his own autonomy. If I have to choose between wild, passionate, but fleeting infatuation and safety, comfort and stability, you'd better believe I'm choosing the former.
I believe I am at the threshold of great adventure in my life, so long as I can my mind and my heart open to finding their own unique way.
"This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something."
-from Eat, Pray, Love
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