Be Yourself. Really?

Dating advisors will tell you: for dating success Be Yourself.

Worst. Advice. Ever.

You, like me, are a sloppy mess of insecurities, half-understandings, moldy old baggage, soiled laundry and fear. A delightful and sexy melange of those elements, but still, we're all rocky road muffins.

I hardly need warn you about revealing too much of the truth about yourself on a date. Dating isn't based on truth; dating's based on outfitting our dates with our fantasies. Ignoring non-compliant data allows us to dream the dream.

However, matters can progress. Date the right person long enough and you'll find that they've either figured out the stuff you've been avoiding, or they're ready to hear it. In either case it's a milestone to know that:

a.) There's no need to withhold any more, and

b.) Someone still thinks well enough of you despite them knowing the awful truth.

That's the time you'll find yourself being yourself without being conscious of it. 







Bottoms Up, Flawed Ones.

Break-Up City, Population: A Lot.

What proportion of break-ups are amicable, do you think? One-half? A quarter? Ten percent? Five percent? Five total?

My guess is fewer than one in twenty bust-ups are mutually agreeable to the point where the two people involved are happy with the decision after two weeks. I base this on my best analysis of the asymmetry of most relationships, which in normal language means that one person is always more into it than the other. That's the point of stress in all our dealings on this quasi-romantic level - inequality of expectation.

There is no way around this notion that most relationships are pretty much doomed from the beginning. If you're a serial monogamist, you're living in a neighbourhood full of cul-de-sacs and regular, non-French dead-ends. It's the way the town-planner - the devil himself - designed it. If you want a continual stream of new lovers in your life, the price you pay is the angst and dislocation of perpetually reaching the end of the road, sometimes pretty soon after taking the turn.

Sure, some roads don't reveal themselves as going nowhere until quite some time later. That means when you do come to the "Wrong Way: Turn Around" sign, the break-up will be even more tearful, the recriminations way more cutting, and the hurt much longer lasting.

And I don't buy the whole schtick about women being more affected by a busted relationship than men. There are cold, callous women just as there are flippant, uncaring men, for whom a break-up is just another speed bump. Men and women process and reflect the consequences of the end of an affair (in the widest sense) differently. From that stems the different ways we communicate our emotions to the world. Even though men will use bravado through the loss, their dislocation is no less painful. Endless talking and re-hashing isn't our style.

There is a way out of this neo-modern hook-up and dump city. But for me to tell you would be presumptuous in the extreme.



Bottoms Up, Turn and Burners.

The Green-Eyed Monster

Most monsters have at least one redeeming quality. King Kong had a weakness for dames. Vampires are hipster fashionistas. Even those funster Zombies forever enjoy cinematic popularity despite their BO. But the Green-Eyed Monster is unmitigated awful.

The fact that Hollywood and Burbank haven't found a way to popularize the Jealousy Beast tells us how bad it is. Every story arc needs a slice of hope; but this....this thing has none.

Aside:

I hadn't heard jealousy referred to as "the green-eyed monster" until I dated one. I was chatting to a female colleague/friend at a party when this ex dragged me away and demanded an explanation. After she cooled it, that's the terminology she used to self-describe. This episode struck me as completely weird, and was a crystal-clear harbinger which I ignored. To my cost.

End Aside. 

Jealousy - at least the romantic kind - is tied up with self-esteem, trust, security, honesty, sexuality and faithfulness in one giant ganglia of hot blood and mean tricks. The dictionary keyword here is 'resentment', a telling description if ever.


We like to think we can intellectualize any human behaviour...at least I do. But jealousy is one of the few emotions for which there is no logical back-door. It's visceral, animal, and therefore almost uncontrollable. And it speaks entirely to the emoter, not the emoter's target.



Bottoms Up, Reactors.

Dating for Dummies

Wouldn't it be awesome if a Date Store existed for failing or unsatisfactory romances?

At the Date Store - beautifully appointed, BTW, in complementary shades of slate and shiraz - the smart folks at the People With Experience and Perspective Bar would diagnose your love life. Within a few minutes, the details of your relationship would be downloaded, inspected and prioritized. Long-term red flags would top the list, grading down to the fact that she flosses in public.

If, in the sad case that Date Store determines that you and your sig. oth. are in the "terminal" category, those sensitive souls will take you out back and break it to you in a special You're Done room. There, you can cry in peace and mourn what you thought might have been. Then, when you're all cleaned up, they'll give you a script to use to actually break up with the person, and recommend a replacement model better designed for your needs.

~!oOo!~

People seek and use dating advice in approximately the same way they buy and use toilet paper, with more or less the same result.

Only financial commonsense and earthquake tips are ignored with the same energy.

What I think most people are after is affirmation, some kind of backstop so they can continue in the same direction. Most folks don't actually want honesty or even-handed feedback because I know me, and I'm a reasonable person, and you don't know what I know about her anyway. So there. She's the best and I'm gonna stick with her.

I'm at least as bad as the next person at relationships. Ignoring truth and reality to keep it going is my specialty, I know how that shit works. But at least now I know I suck. In that counter-intuitive way that life has, it's the best place to be.



Bottoms Up, Justifiers.

Butt me no Buts.

Dr Sadie Allison

Going to college will never be the same. It might not be Ivy League, but the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality sounds like a mighty fine place for anyone to take a few classes, let alone achieve a full Doctorate. One wonders what original research remains after thousands of years of practical application by everyone who ever lived, but it sure as hell would be fun finding out.


Such musings are for another day, because I want to introduce the latest work by a graduate of the IASHS, Dr Sadie Allison. Her book is called "Tickle my Tush" and it's subtitled "Mild-to-Wild Analplay Adventures for Everybooty." My copy was sent to me free.

Firstly, let me say that some of my most memorable sex and orgasm highlights stem from the time I spent with a woman who knew her male anatomy. She was fearless (and determined) in figuring out how to get to both of our pleasure centres, both mind-based and body-based. What set her apart from lots of women was her understanding of the prostate, what Dr Sadie cleverly calls "The He-Spot."

Here's the thing: the He-Spot is best accessed via one's anus, a concept loaded with pre-conceptions, stereotypes, misunderstandings and multiple other psycho-anatomical baggage. Indeed, it took me a while to relax into the idea that the arse, in this context, is just an access point, no more, no less. The point is: WOW, the H-Bomb-Quality orgasms left one radioactive for days. You rapidly overcome any reticence when your universe explodes like that.

Then there were her orgasms, which looked and felt similarly thermonuclear. All that from a little bit of self-knowledge anal-wise (and a willing student.)

Secondly, it is unusual how well edited and constructed this book is. Many of the (surprisingly numerous) books I receive to review don't even make it to a blog post draft - if the author and editor cannot, for instance, complete a table of contents with accurate page numbers, or maintain a consistent tense, or understand possessive apostrophes...then I can't be bothered either.

So. This book is thoughtfully and consistently laid-out, beginning at the middle, proceeding logically to the end. That's refreshing.

Thirdly, I'm just gonna say it - this is a great read. As our good Doctor suggests, I would take it to bed with my sig. oth. and read it with her both for the fun and the education. There's no cuteness here, just simple ideas and instruction wrapped in an attitude of telling it like it is. The tone is a model of neither talking up nor down to the reader. It's a straight-gazed effort at a sometimes tricky topic.

For anal newbies and wannabes or experienced operators, this is a concise commonsense reference to keep you safe, happy and orgasmic.





Bottoms Up, Choccy Starfishes.

Law and Order

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories."

In the first-time dating arena, the participants are apt to forget two critical yet often overlooked flaws: that we mask the truth about ourselves, and turn a blind eye to the incompatibilities of others. These will emerge later.




Bottoms Up, Optimists.

Disparate desires

What to do with a mind full of disparate desires? Every day we need to decide for one thing and against another. Some days we'll make lots of choices; on others, very few. A lot of the time we don't even know we're making a decision.

When the big forks in the road arrive, I find myself more aware of the one door opening/one door closing metaphor. Confusion is not the right word, because I understand that this is a universe built to favour Boolean logic - if this happens, then that cannot happen (at least not right then.) It's more like I am eternally quizzical at the fractional dimensions of our minds. And yet despite that logical detachment I never get any closer to an answer.

Inclusion, exclusion; success, failure; 1 or zero. I get it. But that doesn't make the process easier.


I want:

To travel, and stay at home.

To be attached, but independent.

To be true to myself, and still not offend everybody.

To climb mountains and swim at the beach.

To say what I think, but not create foes.

To be alone, and to be with.

To keep it real dude, and make it big.

To avoid ego, and still be the man.



You see the dilemma.

Trust

Trusty is a brand of dog-food, and dog-food is what you'll end up if you trust the wrong person. Trust improperly placed leads to anger, unhappiness, self-doubt and sexually transmitted disease, and I guess a hundred variations of these things. You know what I mean if you've eaten from that particular bowl - the aftertaste can last for a long time.

I see trust as a more tricky creature than love. Love has positive overtones - even falling out of love has a romantic side, but falling out of trust is deadly. Wouldn't relationships look different if we replaced the word 'love' with 'trust'?

~ I think I'm falling in trust with her

~ He's so trustable I could squeal

~ Every day I wake up and trust her more

He's a sneaky varmint, too, that trust, because he has a self-destructive streak. He often works against those who are closest to him, acting and thinking contrary to his (and their) best interest. One day he's a docile household pet, the next he's sneaking home at all hours smelling of drug-store perfume and rum. And yet it's impossible to lock him up and tame him, because trust is as much about the trustor as the trustee. Trust exists, and can thrive or die, in a mutual space.

Actually, forget the trust-as-animal analogy. A better thought is to liken finding trust to underground mining. The idea is to find seams of gold or opal hidden amidst tons of other rocks. You keep digging away, day after day, and with each discovery of a nugget comes joy, and hopefully an addition to your bank- (or trust-) balance. That sounds about right to me. Trust is often found unexpectedly, often hard-won, and accumulates over time.

If there's another way, I'm unaware.






Photo from here. [Link]

Trust and Respect

It's all so bleeding obvious really, and yet we keep making the same crappy mistakes. At least I seem to.

I asked Maryanne how a woman will know she's with the wrong guy. Her reply - and I'm paraphrasing - is that you need to test for trust and respect.

Trust is straightforward. An honest gut-check will provide you the answer.

Respect is more nuanced. Respect goes to motivation and intent, tricky animals to flush out in ones-self, let alone in someone else. Respect is easier to judge in retrospect, if you'll forgive the word play, most clearly seen in the rear-view mirror. And that takes time.

My assumption is that this works for men as well as women. If it doesn't we're in more trouble than I'd figured. And I should make it clear that even if shared trust and comprehensive respect exist within a relationship, it does not mean that match is perfect. There's always the unknown X-Factor that make these things work.

Ah, the X-Factor, that fugitive from logic and reason.

You are the best, darling.

In our porned-up society, sex-competitiveness has taken hold.

I give the best blow-jobs. Evah.

We screwed for hours man, hours!

Yeah, I'm a bit tired. Five times last night.

Boasting about length, volume, longevity, quantity or dirtiness of one's coupling is a kind of national vanity. One day the National Sex Directorate Czar will arrive to pin a blue ribbon on your chest: First Prize for Bonking.

Unfortunately, the Sex Directorate neglects to publish standards defining good and bad sex. It's the kind of basic oversight you'd expect from another dopey government department, so we naturally turn to the private sector for guidance. By default, the porn industry and its denizens give us the thumbs-up or -down for sexual behaviour, which leads us neatly back to where we started. If you want to know how to do something, seek guidance from specialists.

Ergo, porned-up world.

This is a notion utterly divorced from the truth. A big lie, if you like, that's all too easy to adopt. It's way simpler to discern good from bad sex based on porn criteria than to use our minds. Good sex begins and ends in the mind. Our bodies are the medium through which many layers of drives and emotion are expressed.

In the afterglow, when someone says to you: You're the best (pant, pant) darling, consider asking against whom he or she is measuring you.

Fear

Back to the week's topic, which is why we feel compelled to mask the truth.

I am happy to be contradicted, but I think we are all frightened of what other people think of us. Fear of rejection runs highest on a first date, and gradually subsides from there. The question is why we think another person - and a stranger, at that - has a better grasp on what's good or bad or smart or chic than we do.

It's insane to believe that someone we have just met knows more about life and our place in the universe. And yet, again and again, we seek other viewpoints about where we fit. Which goes a long way towards explaining why when we do find someone we like, or love, or just feel good about, we don't want to blow them away with our version of the truth. It is only with folks we don't know that we feel free to bollox them.

It's completely ass-backwards. Strangers tell us (in High-Def) just where we're going wrong, and our allies can't bring themselves to do so.

Changing this ingrained behaviour is impossible. What we can do is not perpetuate it ourselves, and if assaulted by the dumb criticisms of strangers, ignore it. Dating would benefit from a lot more walking out on people, and treating them as they deserve.

She hates me Part 1, She hates me Part 2, She hates me Part 3.

It's not me, it's you.

Much to my cost, I have been a relationship equivocator. I have, in the past, been the one to say maybe when I really meant NO. Even when women have handed me an out - do you think this is working? - the words in my head, the right words, the accurate words, didn't form. Instead, I have avoided the disagreement, and attempted to smooth over the problem.

I do not know where this avoidance behaviour comes from. There must be something deep-seated in those of us who work this way, because I know it's almost always injurious. For us, and the other party.

There is no logic in trying not to offend the other person. If they are upset at something we know or feel, it's their problem. Not communicating our heart and mind only delays the inevitable. And in the meantime, the truth will always - ALWAYS - squeeze its way out of us in some form or another.

In the universal sense, the truth is always better than a cowering lie. Trying to massage the message to make someone else feel something is equivalent to pushing the proverbial piece of string. It never works.

She doesn't like you Part 1, She doesn't like you Part 3, She doesn't like you Part 4.

Why doesn't she like me?

It's brutal isn't it?

I am not so sure. If you're in sales, you will know that there are three possible answers to the question:

So, would you like to place your first order?

Yes, maybe, or no.

Yes and no are equal best; yes because you have either a new or renewed customer, and no because it means you won't waste any more time with them. If they're not interested, they're not interested.

Maybe is the worst. Maybe probably means no, but they don't have the balls to say so. I treat maybe as no.

In the dating world, maybe is the worst answer as well. Maybe can mean an entire universe of things from:

I would like to date you but I am married,

to

I would go out but you are an inch too short.

If you ask the maybe person what their reason is, just as with a sales prospect, they're unlikely to tell the exact truth. Many people aren't good at saying no, nor are they good at telling you why. It's a human quirk, I think.

That's my theme for this week: Why do we dodge the truth with the opposite sex?

She doesn't like you Part 2, She doesn't like you Part 3, She doesn't like you Part 4.