Serial dating: an epidemiological analysis

About a month ago, I went on a date with a guy who was smart, interesting, ambitious, health-conscious, athletic, curious, passionate about environmental issues, and pretty damn good-looking.  The Venn diagram of our interests and passions would have had a decent chunk of overlap.

After one and a half hours of drinking in a bar, we walked out and proceeded never to contact each other again.

What are we looking for?

This has happened multiple times now. You meet for a coffee, have a great conversation about artificial intelligence, politics, homelessness in San Francisco. And you never see each other again. Occasionally, the romance lasts for a couple of weeks or a month. But ultimately it fizzles out like potassium being dropped in water.

In this blog-post, I explore 4 categories of reasons that I believe drive our serial dating behavior.

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I. There is a diminished need or want for sole companionship

In the day and age of TaskRabbit, Uber, food delivery services and online everything, the need for another human being to share the workload of living with has come down significantly. I don’t practically feel the need most days to have anyone to split errands with (though except for maybe doing taxes, because I haven’t cracked that one myself yet…).

In more primitive times and societies, marriage is partly a mechanism for living, which had a high task burden. Today, the task burden is significantly alleviated by all the apps and devices we have. In more traditional societies, the need for marriage also came from a strict division of labor and skills, which meant women needed men for certain tasks and men needed women for certain tasks. Today, no man needs a wife to cook for him. No woman needs a man to drive her anywhere.

Having eliminated this need, we venture into the wants category to see what desires may remain that could be fulfilled by a partner. The truth is even wants have been significantly diminished.

“Do you ever feel lonely?” I asked one of my dates.

“Not really” he replied “I have a roommate and tons of friends to go hiking and skiing with on weekends, and a busy job through the week”.

It sounded familiar, because it was my lifestyle too (minus skiing, I don’t ski…yet).

The San Francisco (and other big city) lifestyle is one of extended teenage-hood. You live with roommates well into your 30s. Here’s the catch for those of you wanting me to reflect on how sad it is:  it isn’t sad at all – it’s actually fun. It’s fun to alternate who you hang out with every weekend, to have stimulating conversations with tons of different people, exposure to tons of different activities, and all this with zero commitment to doing anything for anyone that may benefit them at your inconvenience.

But here’s the catch…living without love nearby is like living without insurance, it’s great until something bad happens. And with enough health and luck, something bad may never happen in our 20s or 30s or 40s, and there really may be no need for someone beyond your parents, siblings and select friends. Your risk aversion drives how much you search for a partner. In my experience, the boldest/most optimistic among us don’t crave partnership as much.

 II. We like being alone and the freedom it brings

“I like spending the day by myself” – anon girl-friend

For many of us, the truth is having the freedom to shape your non-work days the way you want has become a norm. Especially since during the week most of us are corporate slaves, the weekend is when we get to exercise our freedom. Deviations from this freedom norm are painful. And any kind of relationship will tend to involve some compromise on your freedom.

You also might be the type of person who is happy watching a movie by yourself; reading a book by yourself; going to a museum by yourself with the freedom to linger over any exhibit for as long as you like. I’ve typically been the type of person who constantly needs to be with someone, but a month or so ago I went to watch Jumanji on a Saturday night by myself, and had a great time. Who knew?

III. We know what we want, we won’t budge on it, and we can’t find it 

I think this is the most pertinent reason for most of us being serial daters.

“I know exactly what I want and you’re not it” said one of my dates to me once. (Gotta admire his honesty at least!)

After a certain age and certain number of dates and partners, many of us know what we want in vague terms, if not exactly. Though, I also believe many of us will discover that what we thought was critical wasn’t so important because we’ll be charmed/trapped (half glass full/half glass empty, take your pick of words) by some other variable.

It’s good to know what you want, but it’s probably a barrier to your love life to want too much, and want more than you can give yourself.

What are you expecting from your future partner? And is it really fair given what you will bring to the table yourself?

Perhaps we’ve taken optimization too far in our love lives. Perhaps we need to follow the wise words of Baloo the bear from The Jungle Book…

“And don’t spend your time lookin’ around
For something you want that can’t be found
When you find out you can live without it
And go along not thinkin’ about it
I’ll tell you something true

The bare necessities of life will come to you”

— Baloo

IV. We are waiting for fireworks: about these ‘sparks’ you speak of

I recently asked one of my dates (the first guy in this post actually!) for feedback. Interestingly, feedback in the dating field is extremely taboo. So let me dwell on that point a bit.

Pros of getting feedback:

• You might learn something useful that is either fixable (e.g. “talked too much”, “dressed too casual”) or just an insight on how you are perceived. We all have blind spots.
• They might say really nice things about you and then you get to feel a warm glow (he did!)
• You are probably never going to see that person again so the downside is small

Cons of getting feedback:

• You might hear something that could lower your self-esteem, and it could be unfixable e.g. “You’re too short” (probably common feedback for me, if anyone was ever honest!)
• They might not be honest/might be too vague
• Their feedback might be their unique perspective/preference and not widely applicable
• They might think you have low self-esteem/ liked them too much – and everyone who is dating knows, there’s no worse humiliation than someone knowing that you like them when they don’t like you 

Ok, detour on feedback over. I took the risk. The guy said “blah blah blah blah <nice things> blah blah blah…..Unfortunately I just didn’t feel a strong connection and never pursued further”

It made me think: a lot of us are walking into dates expecting some kind of supernatural connection or force between us, and won’t text back without it. I’ve done it too: not pursued people because of a lack of ‘Je ne sais quoi’.

When you look at relationships and how they started, I have heard a few stories of sparks happening (usually of ‘friends of friends’). I’ve also heard tons of stories where there was no connection or spark, but an affection between two people grew over time. Have I had a spark with anyone I met straightaway? Being candid, no. I did used to find guys instantly attractive and sometimes I still do, but it’s always the guys who every girl finds attractive because they’re visually attractive men  – so it’s not a spark exclusive to me or us.

I’m left questioning: Are we right to want a ‘spark’? What exactly is this elusive ‘spark’ of which people speak?

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Concluding thoughts

So where are we left with all forces seemingly pulling us away from the currents of love that also run deep in our psyche? For once, my friends, I have to say, I don’t have the answer. I just don’t know. But I hypothesize: May be serial dating isn’t all that bad as long as you know when to compromise. May be there is someone out there who is worth the glorious sacrifice of not going on a Saturday hike with friends. May be there is someone out there who won’t satisfy all your criteria, but you will accept them because you will never satisfy anyone’s criteria fully either, and someone will accept you.

And ultimately, like anything in life, Love is a gamble too. So for now, Happy Serial dating, keep at those frogs!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The San Francisco Dating Menu

A couple of nights ago, I was talking to a friend who commented that he missed the Stiletto muse. I’ve had little time to write for my blog the past few months, but I do write in my journal most days (naturally it is mostly unstructured and highly personal) . However, I decided to share this one little snippet from my personal journal today. If the San Francisco dating scene was a cocktail bar, here’s my take on the core of what would be on offer…

Fairy-tales and myths part II: The shackles of Gender

In this blogpost, I tackle the biggest myth of all: the myth of freedom, and expose the reality of shackles that we live in.

The delusion of “Freedom”

Sometimes I feel like I might have an underlying Tourette syndrome-type problem. Especially when I’m bored stiff in a meeting or group interaction, I toy with the idea of saying something crazy, to shake people up, see how they would react. But so far at least, I haven’t said it.

The point is we are all in shackles. There is no free speech. There’s not even fully free thought. No one has full freedom. When I think of the word “freedom”, I think of America. A century of slogans of liberty, life, pursuit of happiness has brainwashed everyone. And the opposite of freedom makes me think of countries where you can’t wear whatever, do whatever. But the reality is no one is really free, not even the people you think are free are free.

Wait, why are you writing about freedom? Don’t you blog about dating? 
What inspired this post was a glass of wine, and a copy of Men’s health which was left in my hotel room at the W (I guess they thought I was a guy?).  Also, I haven’t been on a date in six months (wah wah) so can’t really write about dating any more.

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The shackles of men

I wonder what men read I thought as I enthusiastically started to flick through Men’s health…

Most boring magazine ever.

This particular one didn’t even have an article on sex. The articles were mostly about exercise, and full of serious, slightly angry looking men. The color scheme was strictly masculine (read: strictly boring) and the fonts very straight-edged, harsh.

This is masculine culture as the world has defined it: harsh, straight-edged, lacking warmth, tenderness, joy, appreciation, gratitude, depth, complexity, bitter-sweetness, emotion, indecision and all the other things that make humans 3-dimensional. Men are flat in this world. They’re just meant to wear suits and expensive watches and go to ‘business meetings’ or go shirtless with six packs, and have a few girls around them, who they sleep with but don’t have particular attachment to. That’s marketing’s view of masculinity.

I find it preposterous that for the longest time men weren’t meant to use certain products. Take moisturizers as an example, as if only women needed moisturizer. Or to groom their eyebrows, as if only women need to interfere with nature. And if you look at cosmetic products today for men, it’s just ridiculous how blue and grey they are and how much effort companies have to go to to make them look boring and ‘manly’ enough to be accepted, and how they always have to be labelled as ‘For men’. Have you ever seen a cosmetic product labelled ‘For women’?

The magazine that kicked off all these thoughts

Looks like they had to add blue coloring to it and label it ‘For Men’ to make it acceptable

My perusal of Men’s health got me thinking about the other ways in which men are shackled. Some of these are counter-intuitive and I deep-dive into the ones I feel most worthy of editorial exploration:

• They can’t like anything that’s not black or blue or grey
• They must have masculine hobbies like watching sports, doing sports. Straight men can’t say they like doing embroidery or going to art galleries 
• They can’t cry during movies
• They need to be stronger than women even when they’re sick/tired
• They can’t say ‘no’ to sex even when they don’t want it
• They can’t seem to want sex too much
• They have to pretend that monogamy is normal and that they only want to sleep with their wives/girlfriends
• They can’t text more than one line at a time, or use punctuation (Ok, I’m not sure why this is, but men consistently are sparse and lack attention to detail in written communication versus women in my experience)
  

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Let’s talk more about the meatiest shackles….

Shackle: Men must have masculine hobbies like watching sports, doing sports. They can’t say they like doing embroidery or going to art galleries

Or doing anything that a girl like me who likes poetry and art might actually be able to relate to!

I have many female friends who I can have endlessly long conversations with that traverse many topics, because many of my female friends share the same interests as me: photography, nature, art, poetry, reading, movies, travelling, observing and philosophizing on social phenomena.

And conversations with men? Honestly, I struggle sometimes. The men that are good conversationalists usually are those that have a broad range of interests, and these men are rare. I’ve come across a higher proportion of guys than girls who have just one or two hobbies that I find unrelatable (like playing pool, or watching football). It makes me wonder: is it that they were raised that way?  Is it that they weren’t encouraged to love whatever caught their interest freely, because certain activities are considered more ‘female’ than others. May be it’s not that they were explicitly told that they couldn’t pursue art, but that our society is still pretty gender-segregated from birth to death and so you tend to do what your social group likes doing.

Are many men who pursue stereo-typically masculine interests truly free?

A friend pointed out, however, that in many ways men to get to still have the best of most fields. For example, even if it is relatively less common to come across men who are into art versus women, many of the world’s most renowned artists are men. Similarly with chefs.

Shackle: Men can’t seem to want sex too much

This is a fairly recent phenomenon that I have observed in future-forward cities like San Francisco. Because it’s so widely known that men want sex, many men have taken upon themselves a new shackle of pretending they don’t want sex that much. It has actually made some aspects of dating even more frustrating for girls.

“It’s been date 5 and he hasn’t even kissed me yet, I just feel like he doesn’t want me” – Anonymous girlfriend

I did go on a Tinder date many months back in San Francisco, and was enthusiastically expecting light-hearted banter and flirting, and was disappointed when the guy outstretched his hand and said ‘Nice to meet you’ upon arrival as if it was a business meeting and then proceeded to ask lots of fact-based questions about my life as if he was actually interested in me as a person. Ughh dude, this isn’t Co-founders lab, it’s Tinder. Also, if you’re an Indian girl, 99.9% of people just automatically assume you are boring and a prude. 0.01% have the imagination to treat you like an individual.

Shackle: Men have to pretend that monogamy is normal and that they only want to sleep with their wives/girlfriends

 “When men cheat, it’s not necessarily because they don’t love the woman. Sometimes, it’s just the thrill of it. When women cheat, it’s because they’re unhappy with the man, because they’re not getting what they need” – wise SF guy friend

The more I’ve seen, experienced and talked to men, and read about these mystical creatures, the more I’ve come to believe that monogamy is not their nature, but a constraint forced on them by society. They can love someone and sleep with someone else, in a way that a higher proportion of women would struggle with.

The shackle of monogamy is a tough one to enforce on many men as it runs so very counter to their instinctive nature. So it takes a lot of cultural reinforcement to keep it in place. We see this in the media and in our society all the time with the glorification of people who make positive statements about their marriage. I’m not necessarily saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just observing with curious ambivalence at this point.

When we had business speeches at Oxford by CxOs, some CxOs would randomly bring in that marrying their wife was the best decision they ever made, and this statement would be met by approval from the audience. Was it really Mr CEO? Is that why you barely spend any time with your token wife?  

“Thursday is date night with my wife” say some, which is met by approving nods from everyone around the table. Even though you know they are bored as hell on date night listening to the same drab conversation, but they have to make it look fun and fulfilling to the outside world, and they have to contribute to maintaining the group norm that monogamy is a desirable state, and that one person can be the most fascinating person in your life for 60-70 years straight.

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Concluding thoughts

The interesting aspect of shackles is that they work in several opposing directions. Some shackles bring men and women closer together by pretending that and making us behave as if we are more similar than we actually are. Some shackles bring us further apart by pretending that we are so different and want such different things when we don’t actually. What I hope for is a world with more freedom where people can gravitate to what truly interests them without as much worry about what is ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. And selfishly, for men to become more interesting. Please.

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Disclaimer/Note: What I write is based on my perspectives, and is highly generalized. It’s also written from a heterosexual perspective. I do not intend to cause offence, nor to assert my views as ‘correct’, but intend to bring up topics to inspire interesting thought and conversations among my readers.

Women, feelings, and recipes for drama

“Through all the drama – whether damned or not –

Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot”

– Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Irish satirist, playwright, poet)

Prelude

Since moving to the US, some of my girl-friends and I were on a frenzied search for ‘one of the ones’. There are guys who have been searching too. But recently a male friend pointed out to me that the genders liked to conduct the search in rather different fashions…

What do women want but drama

It was a weekday night and I was plotting my Coffee meets Bagel strategy to conquer some guy with a promising profile. ‘This time I don’t want you to go crazy and pretend that you are in love with him’ advised my wise male friend. If you’ve read my previous blog-post (Theory X and Y) you will recall I wrote about a guy as ‘Prince Charming’. At the time, I had texted him for a week, and never met him in person. When the spell wore off, I realized I had been drawn to an image of him which I’d built up in my mind. I barely knew the guy behind that image, nor would I have been particularly willing to learn, because when the image is so strong and attractive, who wants to peel back the layer and check what’s actually there. (Furthermore, if Prince Charming is honest and makes clear to you he doesn’t like you in that way, you should back down, which I should have done earlier).

But anyways, this time I was meant to show some maturity and level-headed-ness characteristic of a woman of my age. It was all going well. I was rational. I was calm…Then in the dark of the night, I started day-dreaming about the CMB guy, imagining what our children would look like. We both have round faces so our kids would be so cute, thought I. And then imagining our MBA degrees hung up on the wall next to each other. And then the shame set in in dark waves. I had NEVER even said hello to this guy in person. I had NEVER heard his voice, and I had exchanged but a few messages on CMB.  And I felt so excited about him, I should have been checked into an insane asylum. “Failure is the mother of all success” says Pitbull. Sometimes, all it takes is another rejection to set you straight…

…Fast forward a week, the excitement was gone, as were all the dating apps from my phone. I stood in the hotel pool with my friend, looking at her beautiful skin and silky hair, and savoring her deep insights. We had been through a lot together. Synchronized stories of high highs and low lows, and then the calming realization that large parts of this drama was self-created and self-imposed, and created and imposed on women by other women.

In the Jacuzzi, that incubator of great philosophical ideas, one question came floating to the top of my mind: “Why do we women keep being so pathetic and desperate?”

Why? Why was the over-priced Harvard Alumni Cheese & Wine Singles mixer for 33-55 year olds full of women, with very few men? (I heard. I wasn’t there to be clear. Like really, I wasn’t).  “No guy would pay $150 to meet women” observed my friend. And yet women do,  in the hopeless hope that they will meet the man of their dreams at some canapéd event.

Why are we the ones who want to be friends after a fling when the guy can just walk away? Why do we want to know if his Launch Day was a success? Or how his trip abroad was? Why do we care so much?

Sure, some of us are unattractive (it’s just the truth), but there are other girls who are beautiful, intelligent, strong, healthy, funny, charming, all the good qualities…and yet searching for a relationship and obsessing over strangers as if their life depends on it. They are reading books on how to improve themselves when they could be writing these books themselves. They are going for expensive facials when their skin has a natural glow that anyone with eyes would appreciate. When nothing is wrong with them, and everything is wrong with the endless pool of sub-par men out there, women are still the ones hell-bent on ‘fixing’ themselves. Another guy-friend very accurately observed on his gender: ‘We think we’re The Shit, when really we’re just shit’.

Some of these women are searching so hard, that they don’t even see the mediocre guy in front of them and fall in love with some image of him. Eventually the rose tint fades off your glasses and you realize you are sleeping next to someone who is not particularly intelligent, has barely inspired you to do anything great besides watching some new YouTube video, who complains about doing a meager amount of work around the house, and who is always putting his needs first whilst eating up your time and mental energy. And sometimes you put up with it for months at a time because you so desperately want a relationship.

One of my favorite quotes, as I justified all the time I wasted on dating these past few months, used to be: ‘Something is better than nothing’. I’d say this to my friends, to my sister, to anyone who dared question why I was begrudgingly going for drinks with someone who I didn’t really like (“I want to give him a chance”), or why I was still texting someone who texted me in two-day intervals when he had nothing better to do. Now I confess: Nothing is sometimes better than something.

Women have the most to lose from a relationship or even interactions with someone who is not right for them, yet we are the ones chasing it, and guys are the ones being like ‘Omg I value my freedom. I can’t be tied down’.

Why do we do it to ourselves? I believe there are 3 main reasons and then 1 little one (I’m a consultant, there has to be 3):

1. We have a biological clock — Thank you Nature for this (sarcasm). But here I would like to invite some debate: perhaps the biological clock difference is not actually as great as perceived to be? Whilst post-35 is medically considered a ‘geriatric pregnancy’, you and I can both think of many women who have had healthy children post-35. In fact, my grandmother had her only child – my father – at 36. With the newest technology, and the option of adoption, we shouldn’t be as spooked as we are. But geez, women and men love to scare the hell out of women with this ‘tick tock tick tock’ talk which starts when you’re 26. Seriously.
2. We are creatures of deep feeling and want to love. When I was 15, I scandalously read ‘Shanghai Baby’ (It’s not that good. Mostly indecent. It is banned in China for being pretty sexual). I don’t remember most of it, but one quote that I remember even today: “The men were like envelopes for my love.” It’s true. The women I hang out with are women of feeling and thought. And that energy has to go somewhere. With our busy lives, we can’t give it to the causes that truly deserve it: animal rights, environmentalism, championing minorities, healing the sick. Our activism is mostly limited to sharing links on Facebook with some angry comment. And then you’re left with this beating heart that still needs to love and it wants to attach to something, anything. I understand these women, because I’m a feeler myself. When I told a few guys how I felt or how my female friends felt, they came back with reactions like ‘Why are you overthinking it?’, ‘Just don’t think so much’. Classic.
3. There are real societal penalties for ageing — ‘It’s all in your head’ is also not fair to say about most women’s issues. There is increasingly greater evidence to back up what we all intuitively knew. For example, women don’t negotiate in the work-place not because they don’t want to, but because they actually get punished for it. Similarly, women get punished for ageing way harsher than men. And so in our heads, it’s not just tick-tock-baby-clock but tick-tock-wrinkle-clock.  What can I say? As a society, we need to progress to caring less about women’s looks. I do my part for this cause by always looking shitty 🙂

And lastly, there may be a little, just a little, element of women loving drama and poetry — so even when there is no basis for it, we have to create it. This reason I find somewhat permissible. I’m Punjabi. I’m a woman. And that combination means I love drama more than anyone. But every now and again, I realize I have to take a step back and realize I can’t get caught up in the drama that I created, and actually start living in the air-castles I built up.

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In my next blog-post, I look at the air-castles that society and Disney built up for us right from the start…your jaded Stiletto muse is baaccckkkk and it’s time to get real again!

 

 

Dating in San Francisco: The 7 Dates exposé

“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:

1. 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?
2. 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.
3. 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:

1. 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”

2. 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!

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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.

 

 

 

The annoying things the other gender does

In February, in the month of love, I set out to investigate what men and women had to say about the annoying things they have observed and experienced from the opposite gender. I was motivated by the belief that bad things should not be avoided but addressed head-on. I conducted 15 in-depth interviews with a diverse set of men and women from the mid-20s to mid-30s age demographic, mostly from business schools. I talked to people in live-in and long-distance relationships, people who had recently broken up and single people, and then conducted a survey which got 59 heterosexual responses (thank you!!)

My hope is to shed light on some of the common themes that arose and to inspire honest communications between men and women. Likely, there will be some points you will nod your head to, and others you’ll be like “Really?! That’s BS!”. Whilst interviewing, I found some examples where interviewees from the same gender completely disagreed with each other. Ultimately, it turned out, men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. Every individual seems to be from a different planet entirely. So with a pinch of salt and a solid respect that every individual is an individual, here’s what people had to say about the opposite gender.

Note for survey responses, the options were:
1. Never noticed it as an issue
2. Mildly irritating – means it happens now and again, but I can adapt easily to it
3. Moderately annoying – means it happens now and again, and would be significantly better if changed
4. Very annoying – means it’s common & it bugs me

Men on women: What annoys you the most in dating and relationships?

1. Putting quantity over quality of communication

Several men told me they felt their girlfriends or ex-girlfriends called or texted too often, sometimes without much substance to the conversation. This problem was particularly exacerbated in long-distance relationships. My own take on this is that women must be feeling pressure to keep in touch, keep a bond and keep the guy interested across many miles.

“It shouldn’t feel like an obligation to call everyday” said one guy. “There are many days when I have nothing to say” said another HBS guy (cases and job-hunting aren’t enthralling conversation topics apparently).

In response to how annoying is “Putting quantity over quality of communication e.g. sending me unnecessary texts/having unnecessary conversations for the sake of conversation”, 42% of men reported this trait as moderately to very annoying, versus 28% of women.

2. When women feel entitled or want special treatment just because they are women

The broad issues here are the patchy application of women’s liberation and feminism which was a real bug-bear among many guys I spoke to.

“We like the idea of women’s lib, we just don’t think they’re doing it” — HBS guy.

Whilst the women’s liberation movement posits equality of sexes, it seems it’s still too common for women to expect to be pursued rather than to pursue; to expect to be paid for; or, worst of all, to have the dreaded ‘Princess complex’ where girls’ expectations are simply too high and their gratitude for kind gestures the guy does is simply too low or non-existent.

A common reported manifestation of entitlement was expecting to be paid for on dates. “She just kept talking when the check arrived as if nothing had happened” said one guy. “At least fumble for your purse” lamented another guy. Offering to pay was suggested as a good signal by many guys. “You want to send a partnership signal, not a prostitution signal” said one guy candidly.

42% of men in the survey said that “Feeling entitled to special treatment because of their gender” was moderately to very annoying vs just 8% of women saying the same about men.

3. When women are insecure

42% of men in my survey reported insecurity in the opposite gender as a moderately annoying to very annoying trait, compared with 31% of women. Men in interviews also brought this up.  They mentioned behaviors like changing outfit five times, complaining about breast size and wearing a lot of make-up as turn-offs. “There’s nothing I can do about the size of your breasts” said one guy.

One guy said it was unattractive to him when women wore a lot of make-up: “My favorite photo of me and her is this one where we were just hanging out in my room, lying next to each other and she had no make-up on. I actually prefer that photo to all the dolled-up photos of her at parties. I want to see the girl I’m dating”. Another guy commented that “too much make-up makes most girls look the same, they just look like clones of each other”.

Jealousy was another common reported annoyance. “She would get upset if I ran an errand for a female friend when she was around” reported one guy. Another guy noted that jealousy was only an issue if allowed to fester or turn into anger straightaway: “Just say it at the start and I’ll adjust my behavior accordingly”.

A few men reported that they found it frustrating when women’s self-worth was largely based on the strength of the relationship and when women compared their relationship to those of others.

“She was playing the ‘Who has a better relationship game?’ with her friends, which I felt was completely pointless” said one guy.

Another guy commented that his girlfriend would tell him what other couples were doing and suggest they do the same, which he found annoying: “They send each other news articles and discuss them, we should do that”.

4. When women are obsessed with social media

Several men told me that it was annoying when women spent too much time and effort on  brand-building their social media image. 50% of men reported this as moderately to very annoying in the opposite gender vs 22% of women.  It was even more annoying when women tried to get guys to care more about social media if they didn’t care. “Why are you not posting photos of us on Facebook?” asked one girl to her boyfriend. Another guy reported that one of his ex-girlfriends had tried to get him to put a profile picture of the two of them up, which “just wasn’t my thing”.

“They spent more time getting the perfect photo and hashtag for Instagram than actually enjoying the moment” — Guy about a trip with a bunch of girls.

5. When women confer with other women about relationships

The complaints from guys go from the light-hearted “It just makes you look like an asshole” to the more serious concerns: Are you really getting good advice from your friends?  Does external advice sometimes cloud your thinking? A truism from Sex and the City that I hold very dear is Carrie’s observation that no one on the outside can really ever understand what goes on between two people. “Just talk to the guy” said one guy.

There’s also the concern on compounding baggage when you receive advice. “Sometimes girls can give each other very pessimistic advice” noted one guy. And we all know, starting or maintaining a relationship takes a healthy dose of optimism.

6. Then there were many miscellaneous other reported pet peeves:

• Having to police what you say in case it offends women. One guy noted that he had to change his language and vocabulary when around women. “It changes how you give feedback, what jokes you can make” he said.
• When women don’t make an effort to mix with their boyfriend’s friends
• When women are ‘hangry’: Two guys even reported they carried around snacks to feed their girlfriends for when they felt their glucose levels were running low!
• Decision-making annoyances: Asking for input in little decisions, Looking to the guy to make major decisions, Being indecisive
• Taking too long to get ready and then being consistently late for events. In support of women, a few guys commented “That comes with the territory, you just budget for it”. Though other guys also mentioned that women should budget for it and just start getting ready earlier as being consistently late for events was not cool.
• Fancy bedcovers and fluffy pillows. “Why does the bed need 20 pillows?!” asked one guy

 

Women speak on men: What annoys you the most?

1. Men sometimes do not want to communicate enough, and especially not about their feelings

In my survey, 53% of women said that ‘not wanting to communicate enough’ was a moderately to very annoying trait in men they had dated, vs 29% of men who said the same for women (and no guy said it was very annoying, male responses were all ‘moderately’ responses).

With regards to current or longest past relationships, 33% of women felt they were talking less frequently than they’d like to talk.  The good news (noting this has some selection bias as you wouldn’t interact with someone for too long if they weren’t getting this right) is that most of us have it ‘about right’.

Question: If you are/were in a relationship, how frequently do you talk with your partner versus how much you’d ideally like to talk?

However, the quality of communications is as important as frequency. Even if we’re talking, are we communicating? 42-43% of men and women both said that conversations are often ‘hit and miss’.

Some women reported deeper frustrations:

“I cry sometimes and he just doesn’t understand why” said one girl about her long-distance relationship.  “I don’t think we share our feelings when things get tough” reported an anonymous female survey respondent.

The challenge for us then is how can we really talk when we talk? As one anonymous survey respondent put it, she would like: “Anything beyond the typical “how’s your day?” And “can you pick up Kleenex on the way home”. Real conversation would be nice”

2. Sometimes men just aren’t thinking all that much, which can be disappointing

After a moving tour of a slum in a foreign country, a girl turned to her boyfriend: “Penny for your thoughts?”  He replied honestly :“I have no thoughts”.  Another related frustration was when guys counted watching a sports game as spending quality time with one another, and with their girlfriend. For some girls this seemed like a rather thought-less activity.

3. Having a big ego which manifests itself as:

a) Overconfidence and lack of awareness of real capabilities

Even the guys I interviewed confessed to having experienced this in other guys. One girl dated a guy who claimed earnestly to be in excellent physical shape, proudly telling her tales of biking many miles to work on their first date. On their second date, as he stood there with his beer-belly asking her to carry his back-pack on their 5km walk whilst he was looking for a bench, she was struck by his lack of self-awareness.

b) Not wanting feedback

One girl dated an ‘entrepreneurial type’. He was convinced he was a stellar entrepreneur and didn’t accept feedback on any of his business ideas, even the ones she claimed were ‘obviously stupid’.

4. When men don’t know what they want

47% of women reported ‘not knowing what they want at a start of relationship’ as moderately to very annoying in men, vs 33% of men reporting the same for women. But this still wasn’t quite as much as a pain-point as…

5. When men mislead women

A few women reported it annoying that guys often use misleading language when they were dating. Guys would often indicate they were considering a long-term relationship when they were really just looking for fun.  Several men confirmed to me that this does happen intentionally, and not just due to not knowing what they want.  One girl noted: “The lack of transparency bugs me. You find out what they really wanted when they don’t text back after the first or second dates just because you didn’t have sex”. This begs the question: Would it work if these men just made their intentions clear up-front?

Another annoying trait, especially prevalent in online dating, was when men played games by texting back and forth but not actually asking the girl out.

6. When they show off to other men on sexual conquests

Even more annoying is when these sexual conquests are completely made-up! A girl told me the story of her undergraduate dance: “I went with this cute guy and we danced for many hours. I liked him, but then heard him showing off the next day to other guys that he’d had a “great workout last night” in a suggestive way. That was the end of that”. Sadly, I did get confirmation from a few guys that this happens across men of all ethnicities and surprisingly in the late 20s to early 30s demographic too, and at business school. To the few-to-some guys who do this, please grow up.

7. When men don’t want to commit and are insensitive to women’s biological realities

“Most men just don’t want to commit until they’re 30. They just want to play around because they don’t have that time bomb” — Single female

This type of preference particularly disadvantages women in their late 20s or 30s, because too many guys are still looking for younger girls who give them a long lead time to make up their mind or to explore. I’ve heard several guys rejecting girls based on ‘I’d have to decide too fast or move too fast’. This begs the moral question: Is it reasonable to expect someone with a biological advantage (men) to share the burden of someone with a (relative) biological disadvantage (women)? Isn’t compromise and shouldering the burden of others to some degree a key component of our societies? So should we expect more of the men who avoid ‘older’ women in this regard?

8. Then there were the many miscellaneous annoyances:

• Men can be slobs: The “I-just-stepped-out-of-my-pants-and-didn’t-look-back” look especially is not good décor for any room!
• Cliched compliments like “Your eyes are like stars”. One girl recounted the story of a guy who said to her “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen”. “Just open up any magazine on any page and there’s a woman more beautiful than me there” she replied. The message for men: compliment us genuinely for what you genuinely like, and it doesn’t have to be looks!
• Sometimes men were “not willing to include me in things he does with his friends”
• Interestingly,  a female noted that although some men say they want women to not be obsessed with social media; to not wear make-up and to not spend ages getting ready, the type of women men glorify, talk about and look at are women with polished social media and polished exteriors. There seems to be an inconsistency between what men want and what they say they want. There also seems to be a lack of appreciation of the fact that women don’t just wake up natural goddesses and that there are real trade-offs to looking good.

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Overall, we both do things that drive each other crazy. Honest conversations, feedback and just being conscious goes a long way. Though if you still can’t change, incidentally, Anthony Merentino, from Sex and the City said: ‘Some of the best sex I’ve had is with people I can’t stand.’