“The odds are good, but the goods are odd”
said a friend on dating in San Francisco. The testosterone-ridden Silicon Valley has a reputation for a high ratio of men to women, which supposedly would benefit us female folk. My view is that any imbalance between the genders is negative to both men and women. Too many men creates an exoticization of the female species as the mysterious ‘other’ who has to be impressed on dates, mostly with money and talk of how your start-up is part of Y-Combinator. Too many women, as is the case in NYC, leads to another culture where women compete aggressively with each other for men by spending endless hard-earned money on trying to look like Victoria’s secret models, whilst putting out after the first date, when they wouldn’t make that choice if they didn’t feel obliged to.
In this blogpost, I provide a candid exposé of my 7 dates in San Francisco. I cover the good, the bad, and the ugly. My hope is women will relate, and men and women will improve how they date! I did not have journalistic intention when going on these dates, so to protect these men, I will mask their identities as well as possible. None of these men are even friends of friends so don’t read too deep. I hope no one finds these write-ups offensive, as I’ll go into very controversial topics and be brutally honest about what I was thinking…
Date 1: To inter-racial or not to inter-racial, that is the question
My first date was with a white American guy. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too excited from the photos so I was unenthusiastic and ordinarily dressed as I wandered into this date. We proceeded to get bubble tea and sit in the park. It was a chilly San Francisco evening. He talked about skiing a lot. As a non-skier, I just couldn’t relate to this enthusiasm (I’m probably missing out). I talked about where I grew up, which he found utterly unrelatable (I could tell). He talked about where he worked. It was all nice, but nothing special.
Later, I thought about what was missing. Was it a racial thing? That we’d just had such different lives. Mine has been a quest to prove myself in a world where Indian women are seen as meek and ‘meh’. His was a world where everything seemed smooth and uncomplicated. Could that be it?
I do find white guys alluring, as do many ethnic minority women. There’s something alluring about the privilege we never had, and the confidence centuries of privilege brings. The race issue is a big one in dating, because cultural differences can be significant, and relationships can be hard enough without having two individuals living in two different cultural paradigms. Or is it the case that people are people everywhere and race is just another label which misleads us by pretending it can predict what a person is like but it can’t really? There can be inefficient Germans, punctual Indians and non-stylish Swedish people. The more people I meet from different countries, the more I realize the individual can be anything. My conclusion is to keep an open mind.
Then it got me thinking, if race wasn’t the issue, what makes a conversation special instead of just pleasant and mediocre? I came to the conclusion that 3 main things mattered to me:
- The person be eccentric, as I am. And talk about strange things, and not be taken aback when I talk about ‘strange’ things (I don’t even count them as strange). It’s always a turn-off to me if a guy is shocked that I want to talk about a parrot that did math whose obituary I read in the Economist. I’m like seriously, you just want me to talk about Game of Thrones, which I don’t even watch?
- The person be vulnerable. Too many guys show no vulnerability. And I’m left thinking, I guess I must be the only one who is a little lonely being single in the Bay. It’s unrelatable when they present their lives as so complete and perfect with no hint of what they might be striving for because it’s missing right now.
- The person be passionate about something, preferably a social cause. With this guy, I left the 1.5 hour date having no clue if he actually cared about anything. He described his job as ‘cool’, he liked skiing, he liked Hong Kong. And…so what?
When date #1 and I parted, he thanked me for spending the evening with him (kudos for at least being a decent guy), but we both knew that we’d not be seeing each other again.
- Lesson #1: never be unenthusiastic going in. Dressing without making an effort is bad not just for the guy but for your own confidence.
- Lesson #2: Do not pick a cold or uncomfortable venue. You will then not be able to focus on the conversation. Plus cold makes you shrink into yourself, giving the false appearance of being a less open person.
- Lesson #3: Possibly learn skiing since so many people here love it so much
- Lesson #4: Get clear on what you look for in a person. This has taken me a few dates to establish. But don’t assume that people will have or not have it because of their racial background.
Date #2: The resume talker
Date #2 turned out to be way better looking than his photos (double points for Indian guys who actually work out!). However, in the 1.5 hours coffee that followed, we engaged in resume talk. He talked about investment banking (at least he was honest about how much he had hated it), about his current job at the hedge fund, how the hedge fund has a gym (I could tell). I ended up having a good job interview rehearsal myself too.
He texted me afterwards saying ‘It was good getting coffee. Hope you had a nice dinner!” I wanted a second date, because I felt I hadn’t gotten to know him (and he was hot…), but he never replied to my text back. But I was left with a feeling of respect for him for not just ghosting me. For actually acknowledging that we had spent time together and that it had been pleasant with the basic courtesy of a follow-up text. I wish more guys did that.
- Lesson #1: Try not to ghost? It’s hard with all our massive egos and awkwardness about being direct, but try to treat people like people. Your date is a human with feelings
- Lesson #2: Try to steer the conversation away from resume talk because it is utterly useless to know the resumes of people you will (likely) never see again
Date #3 {Section removed, because we’re on our path to friendship!}
Date #4: The guy who misinterprets feminism
Date #4 made me pay for both of our drinks! We turned up at a bar, and I whipped out my card a little too fast (I get really awkward about paying) to pay for my drink. He proceeded to interpret this as my desire to pay for both of us and said ‘OK great, you get first round, I’ll get the next’. I don’t think on my feet so I agreed. And then we started the date with me already having a negative perception of him as a stingy bastard who didn’t value me.
This guy demonstrated some classical SF dating moves:
- Talk about things that sound impressive, but aren’t really, in order to be interesting.
Him: “I came across a bear when I was doing the tough-mudder obstacle course.”
Me: “No way! What happened?”
Him: “We had to wait until the authorities moved it out of the way”
Me: “Fascinating”
- Work on meaningless projects that involve tech, which you think are really cool but anyone with a sense of the problems the world faces would think are lame
Him: “I’m working on this project to connect the lights in my house to the music in my friend’s house, so when they play a song, we get mood lighting in our house and we know they are playing something”.
Me (wine getting to head): “I hear about lots of people doing things like that in SF. Like working on apps to connect fridge to phone. I just don’t get why people work on things like that when there are people starving in the world”.
….So we didn’t see each other again, though he had the nerve to say we should when we said bye. I literally live 10 mins away from him (which he knew) and he didn’t offer to walk me home at 10.30 pm.
Later that week, I lay awake at night thinking about all the injustices women face in the world. How every time we deal with someone who treats us badly, we’re told to brush it off, to forgive and forget. I got really angry, and for women everywhere, I venmo’ed the guy for his share of the drinks bill with the tagline “thanks – awesome date ;)). He completed the request 24 hours later.
- Lesson #1: Don’t let people get away with what you perceive as injustice
- Lesson #2: It doesn’t matter if you’re (politely) honest on the first date when you just don’t agree with someone. If it’s a major difference in life philosophy, it probably won’t work anyway. It’s also a good test of how open-minded you both are to overcoming obstacles. I resolve not to say ‘Yes. Mhmm’ to things I don’t actually agree with.
Date #5: I learnt about satellites and then never saw him again
He built satellites for a living, and I loved learning about space and the satellite graveyard and all that jazz, over our jazz brunch. He paid despite my offer to split – much appreciated as this was a sore topic after date #4. He very kindly walked me to my next stop (SF Public Library) and then just never texted back! I wasn’t attracted to him, and whilst the satellite conversation was interesting, it wasn’t like ‘omg I must hang out with this guy again’, and so it was the perfect example of the adage that there is very little risk in going on a first date.
Lesson #1: Just go on the first date, there are some nice guys out there who will enable ‘no-regret’ dates.
Date #6: No comments – as will be seeing him again. Not in love. But he was interesting and nice and warrants further exploration as a friend at least.
Date #7: The one that messes with your head and emotions and makes you remember every break-up you went through though you only had one date with him
Oh boy. This one. 3 hours of drinking and dancing, and an almost-kiss. Some moments of deep connection. And some moments of resentment. These guys are the polar opposite of date #5 (the low risk first date) – they prove that even a first date can be an emotional investment, with significant pain when he doesn’t text back. In anger after the grace period of potential text-back had expired, I deleted ‘The League’ (a dating app) from my phone (I’ve done this 3 times now so it’ll probably be back). I want to reassure people: I did text him first after the date, but he didn’t reply, despite having acted extremely interested throughout the date and referencing future meetings we would have (go figure).
He was fiercely intelligent and witty. But here’s the thing, despite all his charm and supposed wisdom, the guy was 34, was dating Indian girls because his parents would accept them, yet counter to all this marriage-minded logic, I got undertones that he was actually looking to hook-up! E.g., that moment on the dance-floor when he had a look of sheer reminisce on his face and said ‘oh those New York girls. They were something!’. Wah wah wah. When do guys ever grow up? The age seems to move up by 5 years every year.
Or maybe it was something I did or didn’t do (the avoided kiss)? Another sad thing about the dating scene is the lack of transparency and guesswork that we’ve all become so accustomed to. There’s no feedback. It’s a personal preference thing, but I feel I’d be wiser and more at ease knowing why I was rejected.
Lesson #1: A recommendation for my SF engineer friends, can dating apps please build in some feedback mechanism? When someone knows the answer, it shouldn’t be a mystery…or can we perhaps make feedback culture more acceptable? Currently, it is so taboo that when I suggested to my girlfriends that I text date #2 for feedback they were unanimously like “NO, That’s sad, don’t do that!”. Personally, I don’t believe feedback is ever sad, it’s a sign of striving for continuous improvement and having the humility to accept we’re not always perceived the way we intended…so that’s an item on my criteria list: how does a guy feel about feedback?
Lesson #2: Have a mechanism to move on swiftly as these mysterious experiences do happen — the advice my friends give me is to keep myself busy and distracted afterwards
Lesson #3: It’s ok to take a break from dating every now and again. As I’m now going to do after this blogpost!
The thoughts I’m left with
Every passing day, my appreciation for the deep platonic friendship grows. In friendship there is less jealousy (yes, you may have other friends), more flexibility (you don’t text me in 2 months, I’m still there for you), and most important of all: permanence.
The joy of permanence is so deep. To know that I will look at photos of us together and phone you and tell you I was thinking of you, without ego, without hesitation, because you are my friend.
There is a hidden file of photos on my laptop: smiling photos with a few handsome ex-boyfriends on all of our holidays together. But those travels, like those men, have taken on a temporary quality in my mind. The memories exist but no longer in a collective space where we can both reach them. They exist in my mind only. And I worry some day they will completely disappear, because we never reconnected, or refreshed them, because the small flowers of our friendship were extinguished when our romance was extinguished.
And such are these seven dates of San Francisco such experiences of temporary nature. They are like (mostly) pleasant massages that have no effect as soon as the masseuse breaks contact. Reflecting on why I write so much (my blogposts are a tiny subset of the volumes of journals I have filled over the years), it is this desire for permanence, of freezing moments, thoughts, ideas so that they may last forever. And so I turn these thoughts over to you, my friends and readers, so that we may have good conversations on the themes of life, and so that we may connect again and again and again, and cherish our permanence forever.
