Dating Sites and no not Ashley Madison

I got bored the other day, so I hopped on a dating site. See I live in an area here in the woods, twenty-two miles across Bainbridge Island and Puget Sound as the crow flies from Seattle. I seem to run into more potential dates in Seattle than I ever do in my area here in Kitsap County. Or they are clear across the country or the world from me. 

I've been saying that I'm sure there is someone for anybody, somewhere. I just figure that my potential "soulmate" (a kind of ridiculous romantic notion) is probably in the back alleyways of Mumbai, or Tokyo, Rio, or Belfast (or for that matter Dublin, Galway, Cork, or Limerick...see I'm going there in less than a week for my birthday, so....).

I've been single now since 2010 when my girlfriend and I split up after about a year and a half. She was a great lady but she kept breaking up with me. So on about the fourth time I said I thought maybe I wasn't what she was looking for. 

She was a very lovely Vietnamese businesswoman and I think she had trouble with my being white, mostly because of her family and not really her. I also wanted to pay as much time on my writing as possible and as my kids were just about grown and moved out of the house and onto their adult lives, I needed to have someone going to keep me from empty nest syndrome. Plus, I've made great strides in my writing career now too!

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. 

I'm on a few dating sites just for fun, but I don't much go on them. Not sure why I'm even there, really. I think it's like when I'm shopping for sweets at the store. I am losing weight, so I don't want to eat sweets. I just look, and move on. Window shopping if you will, so I don't buy in the end. 

And no, not Ashley Madison. 

I find a dating site dedicated to people cheating on their supposed best friend in life, utterly despicable. I don't understand the concept of cheating. IF you love someone, if someone is your best friend in the world and you marry they, how can you possibly kill their spirit by going out on them when they don't know it? 

Now I'm pretty open minded and I feel whatever agreement two people have as to what their relationships is, is between that couple (or threesome, or whatever they have agreed upon). But when you agree to be with only them and they don't know you are running around on them, well, you're a low life, aren't you?

I've been trying to change careers and if anything will suck up your time keeping you from attaining a goal... yeah, it's relationships.

So I get on this one site and run into a woman here or there who strikes my interest. I look past the surface info and photos and inevitably find a reason why it wouldn't be workable. Fine.

It's in the not workable part that I found something interesting. What exactly is it that makes them, unworkable?

Number one I think is, I just see the crazy in their eyes, in the look. After several marriages and various girlfriends over the years, the crazy has just gotten to be too easy to located.

Number two is either their location or religion or both. 

They seem to be equal in number of instances. Funny how I can see a photo and know instantly they are Catholic (having been raised Catholic) and I'm almost always right. 

Location has to be reasonable and religion definitely has to be reasonable.

What's reasonable for location? VERY local. I don't want to spend two hours getting there to see them (or vice versa) and the location around here is shall we say, interesting? It's really nice around here actually... unless you're into dating. 

Anyway, same goes with religious orientation. If there even IS one indicated. Yeah, I'm not big into religion, maybe you've noticed that. I'm not exactly secretive about it. Because then it feels like it's more than two hours from here for me. Here, right up here in my head, see? Get it? It's then more like it's light years from where they are then.

So then there is a number 3. 

Which I suppose is... what they say in their profile. Not to mention their photos. It is so annoying when someone posts photos of their flowers, or their pet (espeically if their pets are their children, I mean, really? If there's not enough listed about them, then they are holding back something, right? But if it's too much, then they are either giving up too much (and why?), or they are just too opinionated and either have issues like in having too many rules, or maybe they're simply too high maintenance. Many very attractive women have that issue in having been treated so well by so many throughout their lives. It's not so much a statement about them as it is about what you might have to deal with in being in a relationship with them. And I have no doubt that it's just like that if you're a woman looking for a guy.

But it got me to thinking.

If there's NO one out there then who is reasonable for me to take a crack at, then what's the common denominator in my not finding anyone who works for  me? 

Well. Me, obviously. 

Good grief, what a loser. Right? What a jerk! A cretin!

In considering all that I do realize something. Actually I realized this a long ago but it doesn't help me much in writing it out here now, does it? I'm quite sure I must be coming across the same, to some anyway of them anyway. 

So what's that mean? It's just not really workable I suppose.

I've actually always done much better in person. 

To consider putting your life on paper and then try to look good, is problematic to begin with. Rather when you see someone who catches your eye from across the room, then it's far easier to discount them and move on and not even realize it. Or to find that spark that suddenly flames up into something curious and interesting and well, there you are. All the work getting started is done without even thinking about it. 

And if they say too much or too little (well that comes when you start talking I suppose), other things can dilute the negatives, be it a smile, a laugh, a movement, a glance. Some of us are far better in flirting in person I suppose. Some of the "magic" in who we are is in us interacting. One has to wonder in viewing profiles online and rejecting them, just how many would you have gone for, if you had met them in first, in person?

What was my point in bringing this all up?

Romance I think. Interpersonalities. How we boil ourselves down to a profile and miss some of the great things in life in not having allowed things to grow and mature organically and within physical proximity. Don't get me wrong. 

I met my first online girlfriend back in the early 90s online (obviously) on a BBS, this being pre-interwebs and all. I was thirty six and she was twenty. She found me. She had heard of my reputation on that site and became attracted to me.

Seems she heard about a transexual flirting with me who I thought had been born female. Hey, just my preference. There is so much baggage for me in dealing in relationships, I really don't need any more than the usual that I'm familiar with. So shoot me. Once she outed herself to me online (we never did meet), I was a little stunned. I had started to realize someone was wrong when our sexualty as we discussed, seemed to match up too well. As if she were a guy. A Tomboy? Maybe. But I started getting an odd feeling. So one day online I asked some probing questions and she fessed up.

I tried to explain to her that she really needs to make that clear up front, not later on. I had recently just gone through this kind of thing with someone else on that site. A woman who said she was a model. She told me about her traveling Europe with another model friend. We got as far as phone calls. 

Then she fessed up about having been raped in Europe on that trip, then gaining a lot of weight. I felt betrayed at that point and the betrayal outweighed her physical changes from what she had described. I had a degree in psychology and I was seeing some serious issues here she needed to deal with, before she dated like this. 

I explained to her it was better to be up front with people, and not deceive them as how can that work out to her benefit? I'd also been through my last two major relationships which both ended in deceit. My long time girlfriend through college had an affair, then ran off and my just recently ex wife, had an affair and I threw her out. I was a little partial to not being lied to by that point in my life. Especially considering I had never had a woman break up with me until I was in my 30s.

Getting back to the transsexual, I was actually worried about her meeting some guy who then finds out he situation and he hurts her. I treated her like a person, I showed concern and I was concerned. Well she told everyone on the dating site and I so I somehow got a bit reputation for being cool, I suppose. 

Which led to a relationship with a very attractive, very bright twenty year old computer tech (who looked a lot like Mackenzie Davis' character Cameron Howe, on the excellent show, Halt and Catch Fire. Even down to the short blond hair and who even my housemate liked back then and she was pretty harsh on whomever I dated. She said of all the girls I had dated while living with her, she liked that one the best. High praise indeed. 

Halt and Catch Fire, which I just heard was being cancelled as I write this but hopefully uncancelled by time this blog is published in a couple of weeks as I'm in Ireland at the time this blog goes live. 

That Vietnamese lady I mentioned in the beginning? 

I also met her online back in 2010. She actually (again actually) initially contacted me. This was on a dating website (BBSs having gone the way of the dinosaur by now I suppose though it wouldn't surprise me to find there are still some around).

We met up, hit it off and had a great eighteen month relationship. Until I got tired of being broken up with. Well I understand. She'd had a tough life in some ways, certainly, romantically speaking.

Even though I've had some very good success stories in online dating I still prefer meeting someone in person for the first time. there's just something more as I said, organic about it. I feel like the tentacles of personality have a better field to invest in, to be enriched in. Surely it can work online and then you meet.

Look, that concept of finding someone similar online with similar interests and orientations in life, is all reasonable and everything, but some of my most intense relationships were when we were very different and people would even remark on it:

"How did you two ever get together. You're so very different?"

Love, we supposed. We very much loved each other and the differences just didn't matte.

Not right away anyhow, but after about five years or so (mostly because of raising kids really) those differences did seem to matter after all. Quite a lot actually. Of course those relationships didn't last forever. But it was really Something, let me tell you!

Anyway, like I said. Dating sites. I was bored one day....

Still am. 

Well, moving on.... I have writing to do and an upcoming trip out of country to get ready for.

Seduction and sex as positive relationship and life skills

As Jane Langton says (below in her TEDx video), we need to be able to laugh at ourselves and we need to have fun in life and in relationships. One more thing before we get started. If you have a pet, when you walk by it at home, do you smile at it?

When you see something pleasing, do you take a moment to smile about it? Do you smile enough throughout your day? Even if you have little to smile about, if you try to find things that are lighter throughout your day, that has a lot to do with enjoying life. If you think about how often the number 23 comes up in life, once you consider that, you tend to start to notice that number. The same can be true about other things. Like beauty and humor, compassion and affection.

Chen Lizra

Okay, let's start by watching the first minute of this video from a TEDx with Chen Lizra on seduction. Watch at least the first thirty seconds. There will be a few TEDx videos shared in this blog today just for support and background, and for further (and better) explanation of the specifics of the overall topic.

But not to worry. They are are pretty short, interesting, entertaining, educational and very useful. If you don't know TED or TEDx, they are pretty awesome. TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment and Design" and the "x" is for the independently community versions of these.

"TED is a global set of conferences run by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan "Ideas Worth Spreading". TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event; the annual conference series began in 1990." -Wikipedia

I've been surprised by two things first and foremost in this area. One is how this is abused by some in the public sphere to get ahead and that is fine, but sometimes it does get out of hand. The other is how they will use it in their public and professional lives, but not at home with the person that is their partner in life and the one most central to their life.

This goes for both men and women but I've seen it more in my life obviously (being male) with women. Once in a relationship, they seem to think it's wrong to use it on their mate. Why is that?
I suspect it is because they know how they use it in public and they may not want to bring that into the privacy of their home, for whatever reason. That it is in some way, disingenuous, questionable to use on someone close to you, or simply unfair in some way. It's not, if you have both of you in mind.

This also has to do with self image, how one views oneself.

And in America, how self conscious we are, how we associate sex with everything but then disassociate it from so much where it really should be associated. We are a curious tribe, mixed and varied as we are. We seem mostly to associate sex in negative ways (advertising, reactions to it, pornography, etc.), but is it sometimes not used in ways we may mistakenly consider it to not be positive, where we really should be using it?

We're twisted sometimes, and not in a good way. And not in ways we think, making it somewhat counter-intuitive for many.

We are at times stunted by our over Puritanical, over religious ways and, we need to get over ourselves.

Of course there are other issues, as Tracy McMillan points out in her TEDx. Tracy McMillan is a television writer (Mad Men, United States of Tara) and relationship author who wrote the book "Why You're Not Married".We need to marry, or to be in a relationship with the right person. First and foremost that person needs to be, you.

This brings us to the next issue once we are in a relationship as explored in the Sex Starved Marriage by Alisa Vitti. You can watch the video, but one of the things to consider is that sometimes you just need to have sex, even when you don't really feel like it. Remember the comment above about smiling? Similar issue.

And not just even sex. If your partner just wants to be with you but the frustration, or anger, or the bitterness keeps you from wanting to also, well....

Two things to consider here.

One is that doing is practicing doing, and not doing is practicing not doing. Our reality guides our future.

The other thing is something she mentions about those (mostly women in her therapy experience with clients) who finally do have sex when they didn't at first want to and, that once those women have had sex, usually she says that they report that they actually did in the end enjoy it after all.

This is somewhat similar in many ways to the suicidal bridge jumper who leaps from a bridge and then three quarters of the way down decides that they really do want to live after all. Or if they were stopped from jumping, years later are then so glad that they didn't kill themselves after all, even though they had badly wanted to at the time.

Sometimes we just have to do what we don't want to do, in order to realize what we really did want to do, or that we would later be glad we didn't do something irrevocable, like death.

This is also very much about achieving: losing weight, starting a new project, cleaning the house (maintaining a relationship), or whathaveyou. It is that first step that we are so unmotivated to do, that we most need at times, to do.

One of the things some women (and men) have problems with are issues with it their own bodies.

Between advertising, male oriented just about everything, and puritanism (or religious diatribes against things like healthy sex), women (and some men though that's not as much the issue), need to feel comfortable in their own skin, with their female sexuality and related body parts, as Jane Langton explains in her own TEDx video where she says masturbation is the basis for all human sexuality.

Masturbation. Especially, female masturbation, is important.

Familiarity basically is the issue. To know yourself, to know what you want, what you want your sex partner to do to you, really does help.

Alisa Vitti

In Loving your lady parts as a path to success, power & global change (yes, that is the title), by Alisa Vitti at TEDxFiDiWomen, she says there are many women who need to learn that, in order to move outward to their relationships with others.

In order to make sex what it should be for them and their partners. Life, is not just something you start out in and can expect it to be what it can be. That only happiness through luck and good decisions, knowledge and trial and error. Information certainly enhances our success rates and decreases unnecessary risks.

Then we have to consider, Is it lust or love, a TEDx by Terri Orcuch. This, is an important one in maintaining relationships. So many relationships dissolve because one is in a love relationship with someone who is in a lust relationship with them. And there are other issues about this. Is one partner seeking love through sex? Are both? Because that is only going to eventually fail.

Finally, Make Love Not Porn (makelovenotport.com) from Cindy Gallop at TEDxOxford. This relates to the premise that porn is sanitized and idealized and not real life sex. Because of that and because some people watch it and think it's real or watch it so much they expect reality to reflect that, it has become (long ago really) a consideration and with her web site, she has done something about that.

Debby Herbenick

I lied. Finally we have, Making Sex Normal, by Debby Herbenick | TEDxBloomington. Sex, is normal. We should treat it as such. We should have some ethics about it and we should treat it like a benefit and certainly not as either a weapon or something to be used lightly and without any thought about it. If you ever use sex as a tool or a weapon, use it with you and your partner both in mind and not just yourself.

What are you doing to make sex normal?

Here's the thing (summation) and it's really fairly simple. We have a wide variety of things available to us in our lives as human beings that we need to know about, to think about, to address correctly and to incorporate properly into our lives.

Live your life, enjoy your life but make it work for you, not against you. Because not infrequently, we are our own worst enemies.

And it just doesn't have to be that way.

#sex #love #seduction #relationahip #TED #TEDx

50 Shades of Sadness for Romance? Not really.

Happy St. Valentine's Day! A great day for some (those happy in a relationship) and a miserable day for many (those in a bad relationship, or the rest of us single people).

What to do, what to do on this famous date day\night, right?

The book "50 Shades of Grey" has had amazing success for a book so questionably written and which has produced a much better film (see review). Which is saying only so much. The film is to be released today on St. Valentine's Day. 

Odd choice, you might think. Lust over romance? Odd? Really? Then again, it may be an interesting choice for date night. On the other hand there are various boycotts for it to either not be released (good luck on that one as everyone is getting on the marketing bandwagon for this, from jewelers to lingerie companies), or for individuals to boycott it for a variety of reasons descending into the nutty. 

The point of this film especially on SVD, I have to believe, isn't the specifics of the storyline, it isn't the exchange of romance for lust, desire and abuse; but the erotic It's about the Gestalt that results from viewing it. If you can get beyond the darkest parts and if you've had bad experiences with that, you might want to skip this flick. Skip it hard.

Especially should more negative feelings arise from viewing of the film. Should one or the other take offense and I'd think that would be the woman on the date (or the guy if he's trying to be disingenuous and if she is into it, maybe you should just shut up and see where the ride takes you). If she can ignore the psychic abuse and take it all superficially, it could be arousing.

Apparently it was for a lot of female readers, but will that translate to the same when seeing what their minds imagined when reading it? It's a mixed bag, though the actors and directing gloss over the poorly written parts making it, perhaps, more glamorous? That needs to be left up to each individual viewer.

For either way, it could still evoke licentiousness and actions appropriate to a good time (even if not in the BDSM vein). From what I understand, it's not true BDSM in the story as he (SPOILER) contracts her to be his partner in this. Which destroys the entire concept of using one's mind in all this.

It makes him basically a punk and bully and her simply a victim (dumb enough to adhere to the contract, or is she just enjoying it all?). Having a contract removes any mental sparring, control issues, and brings it all down to a child's version of BDSM, making her a mere toy and less a partner in the endeavor. BDSM for kindergarten players, where one, really isn't.

But, putting all that aside.... this isn't Pretty Woman.

Sometimes getting riled up over matters of sexuality can and do lead to an interesting and rather intense exercise of the behavior. Perhaps not in the ways projected int he film but even only in the missionary position. If however one or the other is observed during sex to have a somewhat out of character resolution to the experience, then we know. Don't we? 

That isn't to say that next time you should pull out your Christian Grey costume and devices, but you do know the mental buttons to push (just gauge that correctly or you may be surprised at the negative and possibly volatile reaction from your partner).

One does have to wonder if in nine months from that viewing day there won't be a small baby boom from its previous viewers' nocturnal, post viewing experiences. Something perhaps that viewing the film over reading the book, would surely more easily lend itself to.

Regardless of what you think about all this, whether you decide to take a date to see it today, or couldn't care less, use your own mind and make your own decisions. Yes there may be some nut cases out there (guys most likely) who will want to entertain the Mr. Grey delusion and simply can't pull it off. Someone may indeed regret being alone in a room with him. 

So think about who you're with and where they may decide to go, or take you along. Willingly or not. Other than that...

I think it's really just not that big of a deal. Hype for hype's sake, abuse for abuse's sake. Where in the end after all, there's a lot of corporate money to made riding this bandwagon.

By the way? Probably not a first date movie....

It seems that Slate has a review on the film now: "Fifty shades of...beige?".