Game Theory

Talking about relationships lately... triggered by the most common trigger for such conversations - the dissolution of one.

But amongst my group, the angle of that conversation that has been most consistent across the last many years is not "why didn't he love ME," but rather, "why didn't I love him? Am I too selfish or unrealistic or cold?"

During the most recent conversation on this topic, I expounded on my take on it - which revolves around relative power distribution.

But first, more background. This particular variation of the "relationship discussion" is about rejecting men who are decent and kind and trustworthy - GOOD men without commitment issues or heavy emotional baggage or other "major" flaws.

Of course, the answer might be as simple as "we didn't love them." But what lies beneath that rather facile explanation?

Since I only remember 40% of what people (including myself) say, it comes as no surprise that I need my friends to recount certain conversations to me. SK and IC have both independently reminded me that they once asked me if I loved my ex-husband. Apparently, I answered, "No, but I trust him."

Putting aside the possible explanation that we are a cold-hearted bunch incapable of loving, why did we not appreciate what we had or could have? Optimistically, I choose to believe that we just haven't yet met the "right" men - specifically, men whose opinions we care about, men for whom we will make the continued effort to make happy, men we respect. (At the end of the day, what we choose to respect, TRULY respect, is highly personal and sometimes inexplicable. )

But to drill deeper, it comes down to power, specifically in the inequality of it. With most of my past relationships, there was no equality vis-a-vis power. I held all of it. And that never held my interest for long. According to SK, witnessing my marriage was like "watching a mountain lion trying to date a stuffed animal."

So if a balance of power is important, desirable, even... that opens up another can of worms.

To quote SK again: "that's when relationships get scary."

Requiem For Online Dating

Great loves too must be endured.

-Coco Chanel

My subscriptions to Match.com and eHarmony.com have expired and I have jumped through the many hoops necessary to ensure that they will not be automatically renewed.

JDate.com is for one month and one month only.

And then I will stop. By the end of August, not only will I have achieved born-again virginity, but I will also be an expert on the tragedy and comedy of online dating.

And then?

Not sure. I feel as though I am about to graduate from some as yet unknown school with a useless degree.

Perhaps I will create and print and display some sort of diploma on my wall.

Predators And Prey

I loved this comment (on my post titled More On Dating (see next post below)) from Robespierre so much, I thought it merited highlighting:

Robespierre said...

Does this not beg the larger "Sex in the City" question: Can straight guys and girls be friends (when they are not physically repulsed by each other)? How many straight guys are you friends with? And by friends I mean friends like you are with your coterie of "BFF!" GFs? From my vantage if you put me in a magical world where I were no longer married [the last part of that sentence was written with my best Homer Simpson "beer" voice], I would be in full-blown leopard stalking baby Thompson's gazelle mode in about 15 seconds. Yes, yes, I know how hard it is to be single in the twilight of our youth where we are no longer so needy and don't want to put up with anything. But I think normal straight guys are for the most part not going to fit into your paradigm.

I do want to stress that I am by no means advocating against romance in any way. If you like a girl, then the courting process will take however long the courting process takes. But in the end you will ambush her and she find herself being dragged up into a tree away from other predators.

First off, it's Sex AND The City (all caps mine). But Robespierre, given that he is a straight man, gets huge bonus points for that very relevant and appropriate reference. Although some points are deducted for his married status since I have no doubt (actually, absolute certainty because he's already told me this) that he watched every single episode of every single season with his lovely wife sitting by his side. But those points would be added back on if he initiated that viewing marathon.

Second, leopard-stalking-baby gazelle mode? *LAUGHING* Would have loved to see that!

Third, with the prevalence of cougars and so forth, it's now harder to determine who is the predator and who is the prey. I myself am VERY uncomfortable in the role of prey. Actually, it just pisses me off. I prefer to be the one doing the stalking.

But those initial observations aside, I think friendship is indeed possible between straight men and women who find each other at least somewhat attractive. Of course, I am the first to say that my CLOSEST friends are women and gay men because of the simplicity and purity of those relationships ("pure" defined as unclouded by sexual attraction). That said, friendships peppered with the additional frisson of flirting and heightened aesthetic appreciation and even sexual awareness might sometimes be more precarious propositions, and might require more effort to avoid slippage, and might not be as CLOSE, but are, inherently, no less solid or real. I remember once being told by a straight male friend: "I would drive you crazy, and you would drive me to drink, so it's good that we're just friends."

But I digress.

The primary issue here is expectation and goal orientation. When people meet as colleagues, as friends of friends, or as classmates, etc., sexual attraction and romance might erupt at any time, much like cold sores. But romance is not the goal of the initial dynamic. And hence, there are more opportunities and time to collect the data points necessary for BOTH parties to be on the same page. Nakedness is not expected shortly after the third class together, or third business meeting, or third group happy hour or dinner. And given the meeting I just had this morning, all I can say is, "thank goodness for that."

As for a long courting process, that's absolutely fine, as long as there is no undue or obvious pressure. After all, it's a time honored practice to sneak in under the radar as a "friend" for positioning purposes. Many a battle has been won by steady attrition.

And especially given the boo-on-dating-and-relationships stance that I have been hearing from so many of my single female friends, a slow, low-key, non threatening siege might be the only effective strategy to breaching the castle walls.

As for being ambushed and dragged up a tree away from other predators? That's acceptable as long as it is according to our timing, with our permission, by a predator of our choosing (after consulting all close friends and comprehensive stalking on our parts), and our hair and nails don't get mussed.

But of course, this is only applicable "advice" for those predators who just HAVE to pursue the gazelle that happens to be bristling with "No Trespassing" signs and sharp pointy weapons. Otherwise, there's far easier prey out there.

Now this cougar-in-gazelle's-clothing is going to take some tylenol for her multi-metaphor induced headache.

More On Dating

There is an epidemic infecting a number of my single female friends: aversion to intimacy (physical and/or emotional).

We all have our reasons, whether those reasons are coherently articulated or not.

On one hand, I think the vast majority of "single" people out there, should they be asked the abstract question of whether they want to be in a satisfying romantic relationship, would answer: "of course."

But the next question is: what are they willing to do to achieve that?

There are other issues involved which complicate the matter: are they in a place where they can or even want to carve out the time and attention for a relationship or even look for one? Despite any stated man-fast, is it just that they haven't met the "right" person? (This second question is what has motivated my own recent dating experiments - the possibility of meeting a person who could, in a blink of an eye, cause me to rethink my own state of readiness or desire to take on the high-maintenance prospect of a man in my life). Does the usual process of achieving that goal - dating - just seem repellent and/or ineffective?

I just had a conversation with a friend of mine that was striking in its similarity to conversations I've had with numerous others, including myself: that the thought of dating, and the usual "meet someone, go out on 3 to 5 dates, have sex with them, suddenly find yourself in a relationship or in the turmoil/annoyance of unaligned levels of interest" is REPELLENT.

In recent conversations about online dating and much of dating in general, SK described it perfectly - "goal-oriented dating."

With most endeavors, having a clearly identified goal is necessary, or at the very least, helpful in achieving that goal.

But with dating, at least for those "suffering" from this particular epidemic, can being "goal-oriented" hinder rather than help?

Have I met my share of freaks? Yes. Have I also met perfectly nice guys whom I rejected after a date or two or three because in that allotted time I never had the slightest desire see them naked, but for whom I could have developed the tingles had we had the time to get to know each other as people? Possibly. Am I aware that my lack of readiness for or interest in a relationship might be preventing me from recognizing a perfectly good candidate when he's sitting across the table from me? Yes.

I have posted before about the necessity of collecting a myriad of data points about a person in order to determine attraction - data points you can't always learn after one date or two or three. And while sometimes chemistry can hit you over the head upon first laying eyes on someone, sometimes it develops slowly with lots of time and repeated exposure.

But with "goal-oriented dating," comes a slew of expectations and in most cases, a ludicrously short time line. Very rarely do men or women want to be "friends" with a dating prospect when the paradigm has already been set up as "goal-oriented." And that works both ways within this paradigm - many of us don't want to be resigned into the friend category, and many of us don't want to try to be friends with someone who is clearly interested in more.

This brings me to the heart of what I have been thinking for myself and hearing from numerous women: we want to be friends first, with no expectations, no "goal" in mind. And in this expectation and goal free environment, to be able to simply enjoy someone's company, get to know them, and naturally, almost subconsciously, collect all those necessary data points about who they are, and play the rest by ear.

Maybe what I've been hearing recently is backlash against a dynamic inherent in online dating or any kind of dating that involves a stranger or near stranger to you. Or maybe it is due to the epidemic of emotional distance and exaggerated caution and aversion to intimacy that seems to be sweeping through many of my single friends.

One thing is clear though. The question that used to clearly signal the kiss of death when it comes to the possibility of romance, might now signal something else entirely: "Can we be friends?"

Post Date Initial Wrap Up

I am home, greatly relieved to be so, and looking at pictures of JF to get rid of the "ick".

Why, you ask?

Well... I do not want to be unkind.

So I will limit my comments to the following:

1. If you want to talk about how much you work out, you should LOOK like you work out.

2. It's generally better to use your indoor voice when indoors.

3. I should have gotten WASTED before going out.

I'm going to stop there.

And oh - per my experiment, I was decidedly non charming. But ovulation trumped my completely bored demeanor.

I did, however, stay long enough to finish the bottle of champagne he ordered. Hey, a girl's gotta drink.

Pre-Date Advice

IC: "You shouldn't drink before your date. Remember that one incident."

Me: *LAUGHING*

IC: "You know I'm being serious, right?"

Me: *MORE LAUGHING*

I'm Ovulating

A few weeks ago, I posted a link to the Time Magazine article Why We Love which summarized a number of studies which use biology and chemistry to shed light on love and sex and relationships.

One particularly interesting study focused on men's reactions to women who are ovulating. The study monitored strippers' menstrual cycles and the tips they earned during specific stages of said cycle.

While men generally are not able to explicitly identify the women who are menstruating versus those who are ovulating versus those who are at neither stage, SOMEHOW, they are able to "tell" and that affected how much they tipped the various strippers in this study.

Menstruating strippers were tipped the least. Ovulating strippers were tipped the most. Those strippers neither menstruating nor ovulating received tips in the middle of the two extremes. So the study hypothesized that somehow, men are able to sense ovulation and are "nicer" to those women who are fertile at that moment.

I had an "Ah Ha!" moment reading this. Perhaps every time I have attracted a stalker, I was ovulating at the time? I consulted a calendar and determined that when I met Creepy Skincare Product Guy who called and emailed me mercilessly for weeks afterwards, I was ovulating. When I met Yellow Fever Guy who told me that I inspired him to write a song, I was ovulating.

Well, I am ovulating RIGHT NOW. And I have a "date" tonight.

So tonight will be a truncated experiment of sorts. If all goes according these studies, I will acquire a new stalker by about 10PM.

But there is one possible causal relationship which the ovulation study did NOT discuss: Is it possible that women (unintentionally) behave differently during that point of their cycle? Were the ovulating strippers more... strippery?

Could it be that I (unconsciously driven by a biological imperative to breed) am more charming when ovulating? That I do a better job of feigning interest in the incredibly boring things that men usually say when I am ovulating?

To remove that potentially confusing element from tonight's experiment, I will be surly and disinterested while on my date. Just surly old me, in all my ovulating glory.

Will report the initial results tomorrow morning.

Standards

EA and MG and I have been swapping emails over the last couple weeks, discussing our usual topic - men.

The exchange started with a description - "he looks good on paper." That led to a multitude of emails detailing the traits we consider "non-negotiable."

I'm still happily on my man fast, but this is an intellectual exercise which never grows old.

My list:

A guy who:

1. has the dark, brooding good looks of Clive Owen
2. the talent and quirkiness of Johnny Depp
3. can correctly spell and punctuate his sentences
4. can hum or play Bach

EA's list of non-negotiables was much more reasonable. But nonetheless, we decided that the only men who actually possess all the desired traits are gay - which violates the only TRULY non-negotiable trait: heterosexuality.

So it's really a matter of prioritizing and compromising - because at some point, you have to accept that one's expectations might be unrealistically high.

That said, I had a conversation the other day with a guy that I have no interest in romantically or sexually, but it was a good conversation - he was smart, thoughtful, capable of engaging in a lively conversation on a wide variety of topics and showed insight into how others think, and demonstrated interest in my opinions. This isn't such a remarkable thing, well, at least it SHOULDN'T be so remarkable, but given that such conversations with straight men have proven to be quite rare, I found it a shockingly new experience and thought him more attractive for it. Is this an example of expectations being too low?

A friend of mine wanted to uncover the specific reasons behind my man fast:

Friend: "Is it that you are just too picky?"
Me: "Well, think of some of the guys I have been with. Clearly, I'm not picky at all."
Friend: "You've got a point there."

The man fast is in place because I can't really spare the energy right now to take a man seriously.

However, despite the fast, I still keep my hand in the dating scene because there is something that would trump the reasoning behind the fast, something that would even trump any and all of the "non-negotiables": the tingles.

And the tingles happen inexplicably, unpredictably - and might not be necessarily inspired by washboard abs or broad shoulders, although, of course, those attributes don't hurt.

I have great respect for the tingles. And I have rarely ignored that siren call. Even with my self-imposed man fast, I would break that fast in a blink of an eye, if I heard the call strongly enough.

But in the meantime, I flirt with boys, usually those far younger than I am, whom I do not have to take seriously. It's just play, with all the control in my hands, no demands for more than I want to give, no compromise necessary on my part.

I find it rather amusing that I started this post by discussing standards and expectations vis-a-vis men, and I have ended it by realizing that I have not only somehow become a man, I've become the asshole version of one.

Make Up Sex

There are countless Facebook third party applications offering all sorts of quizzes so people can determine important things such as: "What Sex and the City character are you?" and "Who were you in a past life?" and "What kind of lover are you?" and "What kama sutra position are you?"

There should be one for "What kind of fighter are you?"

I once dated a guy who fought dirty. He didn't pull his punches, and he hit below the belt.

No matter how minor and trivial the disagreement, he took that as license to cross all manner of lines that should NEVER be crossed and let fly personal insults with breathtaking ugliness.

I likened him to Tinker Bell in Peter Pan. As James M. Barrie said, Tink isn't a BAD fairy. She is just so tiny she can only hold one emotion at a time. Either she's very good or she's very bad.

When this guy was anything less than completely happy, he was MEAN. He couldn't hold two contradictory emotions at the same time. He couldn't be angry about a particular thing while remembering that he cares for the person who made him angry. He lacked the sense of object permanence that human beings learn as infants - the realization that things still exist even when not in their immediate line of sight. So when he was angry he was completely hateful and there wasn't room for the awareness that he didn't actually want the relationship to end, and that perhaps in an hour, or a day, or a week, he might regret his words and actions and wish that he could take it all back. But he was hardly Tinker Bell-sized, so what might be acceptable for her, isn't for him.

He tried to excuse himself by saying that he just doesn't like to fight, and that the solution was simply not to ever fight.

I don't have the words to express how STUPID that is.

Fighting is part of the human condition. We fight with everybody - our colleagues, our family, our closest friends, our lovers, even ourselves. The only thing that matters then, is HOW we fight.

A good friend was just dumped by her boyfriend. It came as a complete surprise to her. Yes, they had had a fight the day before, but it wasn't anything that fell outside the acceptable and normal boundaries of a healthy, loving relationship.

Apparently, her newly minted ex doesn't like to fight. Who does? But again, it's HOW people fight that can make all the difference. Is it possible to discuss even the thorniest issues while still exercising kindness, care and simple decency? Without simply ending the relationship? Of course it is. And then there's the make up sex which is always fun and almost an excuse to pick a fight in the first place. This should be common knowledge. But apparently, it isn't.

My friend's ex is looking for the kind of relationship in which disagreements never happen. I suggest finding a woman of the blow-up variety. But the sex (make up or otherwise) won't be nearly as fun.

My two cents.

Watch More TV

How do you interpret the world around you?

In a recent conversation about writing, BL said that some people have large warehouses of stories and "knowledge" from which they can dazzlingly produce insights and connections between seemingly unrelated things. His example was Stephen Jay Gould.

Of course, Gould was in a class by himself with an Amazon.com-sized warehouse, but we all have our warehouses, albeit smaller and filled with less interesting things. And the stories we've collected, the stories we've "written" ourselves, provide a basis for understanding the things that happen around us. It's pattern recognition - but in order to see a pattern, we need to RECOGNIZE it, it needs to be familiar. This is why you can always identify the women who've read too many Harlequin romance novels or the guys who've watched too much porn, because there's always the desire (or habit) to mold things into familiar patterns.

IC and I, in starting this business together, have had many a conversation about our respective strengths and weaknesses. Conventional wisdom as touted by self-help books and job performance reviews would tell you that you should identify your strengths and weaknesses and work on improving your weaknesses. We disagree. Our stance is that you should work on getting even better at the things you already do well and COMPLETELY IGNORE your weaknesses. You can always find people who do well what you can't.

SK and I discussed this in the context of IQ tests. I've taken three in my life - IQ tests administered by someone trained to do so, lasting HOURS. The first was when I was very young, and the hungrier I got, the more my answers involved food:

"What's the answer to this?"
"Ice-cream."
"And this?"
"Fried SPAM with rice and kimchee."

The second was in High School, and the third was part of a job interview process (also involving countless sessions with shrinks, polygraphs, EKGs and MRIs and blood work, and sessions where I was instructed to wear comfortable clothes and I showed up garbed in my Juicy Couture sweatpants and matching hoodie and wedge sneakers purchased in Florence. But I'm not really allowed to talk about it so maybe I'm lying to make this post more titillating and as an excuse to type "titillating" again.)

There's a common thread throughout all my results. There are certain things I'm very good at: pattern recognition and production involving numbers and puzzles, in particular. And there are the things that I am VERY BAD at: essentially everything requiring an understanding of what motivates other people - my scores for those sections confirm my mother's worst fears that I am retarded.

This explains why I am constantly asking SK and IC why so-and-so did this or that, and what will so-and-so do next? However, they're not particularly good at this either, so we usually end up just making shit up, or trying fruitlessly to apply game theory, or going to facade.com's yes/no oracle.

WC and KK are far better resources for me. They both have vast warehouses of stories illustrating the calculus involved in interpersonal relationships. And just as people very fluent in a foreign language no longer have to translate when they speak or listen, WC and KK have internalized these patterns and pieces of patterns so that their analyses don't have to involve overt translation from a particular story. In contrast, if I haven't read a book or watched a movie that describes that exact interaction, I am at a loss.

So I guess my big take-away from this is that I should read more. And possibly watch more porn, or at least watch movies other than slasher flicks. Maybe the Lifetime Network?

High Brow Smut

My mother is a genius. This is an objective statement of fact, not colored by love or familial respect. Earlier this year, she finished her second PhD, in Religious Philosophy (her first was in Computer Science - those of you enjoying mp4s can thank my mother - she built much of the technology involved). She also has a deep seated suspicion that her only child might be retarded since I have yet to earn my first doctorate and didn't go to Harvard. But whatever, Daddy thinks I'm smart.

Because she gave birth to me, I have been editing her dissertation to ready it for publication, gratis. And we have been arguing about the appropriateness of applying different philosophies of the scientific method to her thesis. Her thesis aside, our most recent "discussions" (where most commonly repeated, on both sides, is the accusation of sloppy thinking, and I usually lose) has led me to apply these philosophies to dating and sex and love.

There is a "well known" conflict between the opposing views of two twentieth century philosophers of science - Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. In this post, I will argue that their views are not conflicting when applied to the topic of sex and dating and love and that the specific stage of dating determines the prevailing paradigm followed. Note that I am not being prescriptive, merely descriptive, based on the data points I have gathered from my experiences and those of my friends.

Initial Stage - Dating:

Popper's theory of Falsificationism states that scientists should give up a theory as soon as they encounter any falsifying evidence. He maintains that theories should be held very tentatively and that basic assumptions should be continually questioned and criticized. Commitment, for Popper, is a crime.

Consider the prelude to a first date when online dating. Even after the picture and the written profile pass muster, and the initially formed, tentatively held assumptions appear promising, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. The guy who looks cute in his profile pictures can suddenly email pictures of himself in his underwear which is just plain creepy. Or the guy whose written profile suggests the completion of a college education might send emails rich with tragic mistakes: "it's vs. its", "further vs. farther", "less vs. fewer".

Even when the prelude to the first date is successfully completed with no horrifying falsifying evidence, there's the first date itself: the guy who eats with both elbows on the table; the guy who licks his butter knife; the guy who says, after asking for the check: "I feel strongly that we split the bill because I don't want you to feel obligated to have sex with me."

Later Stage - the Relationship:

If all the preliminary stages of dating are successfully completed and an actual relationship ensues, then Thomas Kuhn steps in.

Kuhn describes science as consisting of periods of "normal science" (the relatively routine, day-to-day work of scientists) during which theories are held tightly, with great tenacity and commitment, even in the face of anomalies, and only questioned in rare times of crisis.

Sort of like: "Ok, so he can't run for President because of the felony conviction, but I don't need to be the First Lady."
Or: "He's 20 years older than I am and balding and impotent, but hey, doesn't every relationship have its problems?"
Or: "He doesn't really know what the hell he's doing in bed, but he makes a mean omelet."
Or: "He's really annoying when he talks and walks and eats and breathes but at least he's not a sociopathic alcoholic."

The Intermediate Position:

Now, there is a philosopher who sought a methodology that would harmonize the stances of Popper and Kuhn. Imre Lakatos proposes an intermediate position: commitment to a "hard core" of central ideas which are protected from conflicting evidence by making adjustments to the "protective belt" of auxiliary hypotheses.

Rather like: "He's thoughtful and sweet, and hey, what guy DOESN'T lick the butter knife?"
Or: "He's handy around the house and listens to more than 50% of what I say to him, and as for sex, that's why they invented vibrators!"

But Lakatos has an interesting twist: he doesn't ask whether a hypothesis is true or false. For him, the important question is whether the entire research program as a whole is progressive or degenerative. A progressive research program grows, and that growth is accompanied by the discovery of new information. A degenerative research program either stalls, or grows in a way that does NOT lead to new information.

I think this is a good point to close this post. Here's to the promise of a progressive Lakatosian research program for dating, sex, and love!