breaking up

For years, I thought that ‘love’ was just the far end of the ‘like’ spectrum. If I was dating a girl and really enjoyed spending time with her, really liked her a lot, I would start to ask myself, “am I in love? Is this enough ‘like’ to push me all the way into ‘love’ territory?”

Then, about a year back, I fell in love. I mean, Love with a capital L. And I realized that ‘like’ and ‘love’ were two completely different things. Getting emails from this girl would knot my stomach. I’d lie awake at night thinking about her. Whole poems, whole songs worth of lyrics, suddenly seemed relevant and personal and amazingly true.

Six months later, due to age difference (she was reaching the point where we’d walk by a Baby Gap and she’d unconsciously veer towards the door) and geographic distance, we broke things off. Which, while sad, was the right thing to do.

But now, when I go out on a date, I’m looking for something completely different than I was before. Not a girl I really, really like. Not a girl I can try and convince myself could be the one if I would just stop being so selfish or commitment-phobic or whatever else. But a girl I could love. Really love.

Which, frankly, makes dating in New York rather tough. The Big Apple is a lonely city, one with an overwhelming singles scene that makes the comfort of ‘really, really like’ a hard thing to give up. Even if, in the search for Love with a capital L, it’s the right thing to do.

|  
September 29, 2003

dilemma, defined

Just as I’m celebrating the nearing end of the intensive ballroom dance course into which I’d rather unwittingly been dragged (a grueling three hours, twice weekly), a lithe and remarkably attractive young French woman in my class asks if I’d consider continuing on in private lessons as her partner.

|  
September 3, 2003

one degree of separation

There are few exercises in psychology so perversely fascinating as meeting your ex-girlfriends subsequent boyfriends (or, as in at least one case, subsequent girlfriends); it is, inevitably, a wonderful glimpse into the workings of both her mind and your own.

|  
August 3, 2003

i should have rode the short bus

Earlier this evening, having dinner with an about-to-be-wed friend, I repeated a scene that’s become distressingly common over the last twelve months:

Her: You know, back in high school, I totally had a crush on you.
Me: Wait, really? In high school I totally had a crush on you.

I mean, what the hell, fifteen-year old me? How were you so entirely clueless? How did you possibly drop the ball on so many prime booty opportunities?

|  
July 22, 2003

see: straw, camel’s back

It is always the very small things that destroy relationships, the minor grating details that compound slowly over time until, one day, you wake up with the sudden realization that you couldn’t possibly spend the rest of your life with the kind of degenerate who would habitually leave the toothpaste uncapped, allowing the tip of the tube to gum over with dried out paste.

|   
July 8, 2003

quick recap

Partied like a rockstar yesterday evening with with the wonderful Ms. Brown (who is every bit as cool in person as her blog might imply), until getting kicked out of the closing champagne speakasy (at 1:00am) and then the closing Irish pub (at 4:00am). Not one to kiss and tell, that’s all I’m saying.

|  
July 7, 2003

tonight, tonight

Yes, kids, this evening is the long-awaited drinks with Sarah Brown, who claims it should take less than 15 minutes to disabuse me of my belief that she’s pretty, witty, and gay [ed. note: in the “fun and happy” sense of the word]. Sorry, Ms. Brown, but no matter how horribly tonight turns out, you’ll always have a piece of my heart for things like yesterday’s text message: “Sunday Sunday Sunday? You’ll pay for the whole seat but you’ll only need THE EDGE.”

And anyway, how could an evening be less than stellar once you’ve invoked the watchful spirit of Truckasaurus Rex?

|  
July 6, 2003

newman’s first law of booty magnetism

Apropos my last post, I’ve recently been honing a gender-differentiated theory on attractiveness and attraction. Though it’s still rough, I think I’m ready to share the basics:

Guys: At first glance, we boys talk a big game, rating women ruthlessly (“look at her calves; I can’t give her better than a seven”). But when it comes down to it, we don’t really value looks as much as our guy-banter implies. We do, however, have a minimum attractiveness threshold, a point below which, no matter how much we like the girl, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to see her naked. Though it’s strictly inviolable (consider the number of guys who, though feeling remarkably guilty about it, have a close female friend they’d marry if only she were slightly more attractive), it’s also probably much lower than girls would likely assume (rarely higer than a six, even for the most critical men). So long as she’s above the minimum cutoff, a cool girl the guy loves to spend time with trumps a hotter-but-boring one every time. In other words, while we guys have an inviolable minimum, above that line we weight personality more heavily than looks.

Girls: Ladies, however, have no fixed minimum. As Voltaire observed, give a charming guy ten minutes to talk away his ugly face and he could bed the Queen of France. (Hence the vast majority of women who have dated [or fallen in love with] men they initially found horribly unattractive – something we guys find inconceivable.) Conversely, however, women factor in attractiveness the whole way up; there is no point after which additional beauty doesn’t much matter. Which is to say, with most women, a totally rockin’ 7 would face stiff competition from a merely reasonably interesting 10.

The groups of friends on which I’ve tested the theory have nearly universally agreed, but I’d love to hear from readers who can help hone the details (or perhaps rebut my hopethesis altogether). If you’ve gleaned some sharable yet hard-earned insight from the battlefields of love,

|   
June 27, 2003

all grows up

You know when you’re on a plane, and you’re one of the early boarders, and the seat next to you is empty, and every time a really, really hot girl walks on you think “please, please, please let her seat be next to mine”? Well, this time, hers was. Though, sadly, she had the brains of toothpaste. Which, frankly, in my younger days, would not have even been cause for momentary pause (as several regrettable past exploits amply demonstrated). This time, however, when at the end of the flight, she asked if I’d maybe want to meet up for drinks at some point in San Francisco, I instead demurred, saying that I’d just be in for a night or two, and would be terribly busy the whole time.

Passing up easy hot-stupid-girl booty. The first sign of adulthood?

|