Tag Archives: relationship

Hack Your Love

hack your love online datingWhen I ask about it, many people describe their experiences dating online with a kind of tired resignation, the same way they feel about keeping up with a million different online offerings. We even have a new word for ennui in this new universe: FOMO (“fear of missing out,” for the grampses). But there are ways to make the process easier, more productive, and even enjoyable….honest, though, like certain waxing techniques, the effort’s never going to be completely painless.

 Be Yourself (No, really!)

Take some time to make your presence be consistent with your personality. OkCupid found that the people who received more 5-star and 1-star reviews were more likely to be contacted than those who mostly received 3 stars. This suggests that it’s better for people to have a strong reaction to you for your own particular quirks. So for pity’s sake, don’t be generic. Flaunt your big nose rather than hide it, talk about your penchant for shower balladry—it’s far more interesting to people than a banal “I like music.” A Note on Pictures: First, have more than one, and from more than one angle, with at least one showing more than just your face. Include an action shot, perhaps doing something you love. Unless you are looking for a co-dependent Peter Pan, don’t have a ton of bar pics with friends, and though you should definitely be you looking your best, your pics should also look like you. Don’t post a 19-year-old pic if you’re in your 50s.

Hone that Chat-Craft

I can only observe from the woman’s perspective, but many men don’t really try to engage us in a real way. They use the same tired come-ons and clichés, thinking maybe women don’t immediately know what they’re doing (working the numbers game). They sometimes they use the comfortable distance of the online experience to vent frustration. To this I say, relax, and step away from the computer. As in any interaction, the first one to get angry loses. Treat every new interaction as an opportunity to meet someone new. Ask questions, and listen.

Hold Yer Judgment Horses

Perhaps it’s crass to put everyone on a reductive rating scale, but everyone does it, especially at first. And it’s worse online, but try not to get too enamored or too dismissive of anyone before meeting. If you have a rapport, move on to a real-life meeting as soon as possible. You’ll find out much more quickly what the person’s about. Plus, people are a lot more forgiving in person than online. If someone isn’t interested in meeting in real life, it’s a sign they may be using the site for validation or as a pass-time.

The Ultimate Hack

The best E-modifications to make are to your own attitude. Check your baggage, and use the feedback you’re getting to turn what can be a time-suck into a useful place to learn. Though we are doing all this with a goal in mind, it still pays not to be too goal-oriented. Have fun, try different approaches (and talk to different people) and remember that most people are just as curious, insecure, longing, and interested in making a connection as you are. Then…limit your time on any site, get off the computer and go do something worth sharing!

This essay first appeared in Industry magazine’s Spring 2016 issue.

hack your love online dating

boomer marriage

Boomer and Bust

boomer marriage

The love generation keeps on splitting up. Ah, capricious age!

For younger generations, who are getting married less often and later in their lives, the divorce rate keeps going down. It is Boomers (those who came of age in the 60s and 70s) who are tipping the statistics toward that notorious 50% mark.

Since these people have lived together a lot longer than I can say, I will reserve judgement. When Gen X hits their 50s they may go through a wave of divorce, too. It’s a side-effect of people living longer.

But. Does it not seem  inevitable that the original “Me Generation” should be choosing freedom over sta(b)le relationships, even late in life when it’s probably a bad move financially?

What’s behind the uptick in Boomer divorce?

Perhaps it’s just a misguided, old-fashioned attempt to avoid the realities of the onset of old age and death. Sorry, can’t really figure out a way to sugar-coat that one.

Read along in Industry this month. Thanks to my parents for playing along, and not accusing me of intergenerational warfare, and to my brother for originally asking me to “Debunk this 50% divorce rate myth!”

Read Boomer and Bust at issuu.com

Entertain-men

Entertain-men The ideal first date and venues to steer clear of | Industry | July/August 2015

I had my first real date at the ripe old age of 19.

I can’t remember Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 2.40.12 PMwhat we talked about now, but conversation flowed. He was hot, tall, blond, with tribal tattoos ringing around his arms. I’d never been so into anyone. The date didn’t matter, the mediocre pizza, or what we did, but the gamble paid off, and we liked each other.

“I was wondering if you would go out with me,” he’d flatly asked a few days before. I thought it was strange for him ask not for a date exactly, but to “go out.” But I felt a little flutter in my belly, and couldn’t stop smiling and twisting at my hair as I agreed, yeah, we could “go out.” I might have cringed, but the straightforward approach is all that has ever worked with me ever since.

In school, it was much more loosely defined hanging out that dominated our social lives, ironically past any ideas of traditional courtship. So for me it was hard to press on past the contrived nature of the situation. I felt weird, he and I, sitting across from each other over dinner, because we could have had fun at a car impound or in a rainstorm, and ever since I’ve been convinced that non-structured is very often the best recipe for early interaction.

Still you have to do something on a first date, even if you don’t want to call it a date.

Keep reading…

Staying Summer

Staying Summer | Industry | June/July 2015 | How can a relationship stay strong, yet maintain the vitality and newness of its early season?

There is a bodice ripping illo here, due warning.

Summer can be a challenging time for relationships. By the end of winter we’ve seen a lot of each other. Most break-ups happen in late winter/early spring, and most new relationships are begun in the fun and loose summertime months. It makes sense. We go out more, see friends, meet new people.

Looking around for the next thing is pretty much epidemic in the 21st Century. That concept used to be confined to stuff (a new phone, a car), but has spread to intimate relationships. There just seems to be less brainspace to take care of what we’ve got, yet somehow more to devote to what we don’t, and when it comes to relationships, that’s bad.

So how do we get that “new” feeling without continually trading people in?

Read more here. Thanks to those I interviewed and other helpful suggestions from astute readers.

 

 

 

Red Flags

My latest column for Industry Nov/Dec. 2012 issue:

Red Flags …and all the things we’re worried about in relationships that are really not that big of a deal

An excerpt:

Maybe the writers of these one-size-fits-all relationship articles are trying to be helpful, but they are little better than hucksters selling us a panacea, that holy grail of the “right relationship.” We chase apocryphal fantasies, that outlier couple who knew each other only a short time before getting married, and who are happy thirty years later. But these ideas have little personal meaning for us. We haven’t earned those insights. As much as we’d like to be able to make rational decisions based on unbiased observations, relationships and our perceptions of them are pretty much the opposite of that: they are emotional, partial, and incomplete, and our love flows from some intangible source while our knowledge lags behind.

Read the rest here. Thanks!

Cosmo Grrrl

My latest Industry article Cosmo Grrl …On sex icon Helen Gurley Brown’s passing, finding mojo in print, and some advice on writing relationship articles.

Maybe Cosmo indoctrinated me into lady concerns, or gave me a slight complex about my body, but that HGB took her readers more seriously than did the tween mags on offer was obvious. I might never have shiny hair or wear skirt suits, but I was a Cosmo girl in independence.

Read it here.

The Good Fight

Also in this month’s Industry, in my latest relationship column I continue to parse out the things that test relationships, including those that lead to its strengthening as well as dissolution. Ain’t life a bitch that way, sometimes? Can’t always separate the experience.

from the article:

What we fight about, over and over, comes to define the outlines of the relationship, the bigger themes, and the irreconcilable differences. But so often we end up on one end of a binary that seems to offer no middle ground. Yes or no. Hold your ground or give way. You are being selfish, or they are asking too much.

So, when the fighting breaks down, what to do?

Read it here: The Good Fight Industry July/Aug 2012.

Thanks for the eyeballs and to all the good ideas, keep em coming!

 

Trial By Fire: How to Get to Know Each Other Better, Better

Summer is a season tailor-made to help you get to know each other…for better or worse. In Industry magazine’s May/June 2012 issue, Trial by Fire, I talk about the ways you can get to know your new love. People tend to be on best behavior at the beginning, and while it’s understandable and most of us act this way, it also makes it hard to tell if you really complement each other. So I advise to put the relationship through certain stress tests, and early. It can help you head off any problems, or see irreconcilable differences early on, before you commit.

Read it here: Trial by Fire.

If spring is the time of beginnings, renewal, and nurturing young growth, then summer is the duration, the maturing of youthfulness, with all the results–and trade-offs–implicit when infinite possibility actually chooses.

Summertime also contains within it a sense of the future. Gather ye rosebuds while you may; enjoy the summer (while it lasts). The blooming world seems to hold a certain nostalgia, both for other summers (too short, always), for childhood (and summers off school), and for the dread and anticipation of its end, of harvest time, when we finally can see what we’ve been growing all year.

Let me know what you think. Maybe this is playing with fire? (ha, see what i did there?)

 

The Long Kiss Goodnight-Club

In Industry’s July/August 2011 issue, I wonder if night life has a sell-by date…

The Long Kiss Goodnight-Club Cresting the 30s for nightlife aficionados can mean chucking a frenzied hunger for adventure in favor of the redder meat of real friends, friendly clubs, and love that doesn’t expire after dawn

“The fear is that one has a ‘sell-by’ date as a woman, that you can be behind the times, living too late, too old for that skirt. But I am happy tonight, not just because the person in the car beside me is someone I know and love.”

Link here
Thank you as always for reading!

“I Just Can’t Decide…” Polyamory and the Choice of Monogamy

My latest piece for Industry’s May/June 2011 issue, a look at polyamory, the enjoyment of many loves, and what nonmonogamy offers to those who practice it. What do our beliefs about monogamy say about us, and our relationships?

“I Just Can’t Decide”: Given that, biologically, monogamy is a purely artificial and conjured state, does it make sense to explore a number of love options…at the same time?

“It was a revelation for me that it’s perfectly natural to like different people for different reasons. Why should we hide mere attraction? Maybe making it so taboo contributes, ironically, to cheating, and the allure of forbidden fruit.”

Link here

Thanks for reading!