(Mis)Adventures in Dating: What's the equivalent of blue-balling for blogging?

... So, I've been rather horrific about updating this blog, an offense made even worse by my last post, which promised all sorts of juicy stories about my dating (mis)adventures. I wish I could attribute my absence to being kidnapped by a viking named Bjorn who then strapped me on the back of his alpaca and took me away to live in his yurt, which, of course, has no internet and is beyond the reach of my AT&T 3G coverage. But alas, my life is never that exciting, and I can only say that after a series of bad dates that involved one guy rushing back to work after meeting me for 43 minutes, another guy purring while he was sexually aroused, and another guy trying just a little too hard to get me drunk, I decided that the piss in the dark that is internet dating might just not be the strategy for me. So, I took a new strategy called "Giving Up," and welcomed a summer break of helping my dad adjust to his new bionic hip, playing mah-jong with my mom and aunts, and watching Downton Abbey on Netflix streaming. I do have the impulse to be quite content in this spinsterish state, but a new academic year signals new goals and new aspirations. So the last couple of months have been devoted to fully enjoying the social circles I've cultivated in the past year.

Since coming back to Boston in August, I've been reconnecting with friends who then extend invitations to parties thrown by their friends, getting more involved in an community organization I volunteer for, and spending more time with people from my Taekwondo studio. I figure it only makes sense to meet people doing things that I'm already interested in doing. Even if I don't find myself a boyfriend or a guy who is remotely fuckable in these activities, I figure at the very least the men whom I do meet can introduce me their friends. (Because, frankly, spending all my time with single chicks isn't doing me any favors.) There's only one problem with this strategy: At my age, being out and about and doing athletic shit really results in me spending time with more married men.

And here's the thing with married men, that I had never before discovered: They're way easier to get along with.

Which makes sense, I suppose. A married guy can chat you up, flirt with you, make you feel special, knowing full well that he's always going to have his wife to go home to. Whereas single guys get all anxious about whether or not you find them attractive, whether they're saying or doing the right thing, whether you're interpreting their words or actions the wrong way, married guys can do whatever the fuck they want without putting their egos at risk. If the girl responds positively, talk about validation! And if not, it doesn't matter, because they can always count on wifey to give them a blow job when they get home. (Yes, I realize that was a very sexist thing for me to say, but to be frank, I'm around a lot of super heteronormative couples who, despite their liberal politics, have a strange tendency to replicate really old-school gender roles in their marriages.) Maybe it's for this reason that married men seem to exude a confidence that I rarely find in single men.

Sometimes this confidence is harmless. I have one friend whose husband always says things to me that I wish I had heard more often from my ex-boyfriends. He'll tell me I'm a catch, notice what I wear, and greet me with a "Hi, gorgeous." But since this is always done in front of his wife, I always take it as just platonic flirty flirtykins. While I know that his wife could very well be gritting her teeth at his behavior and ripping him a new one when they get home, I have no reason to believe that his flirtatious behavior indicates any intention on his part. Which, of course, brings its own frustration: DON'T FUCKING CALL ME GORGEOUS IF IT CAN'T MEAN ANYTHING TO ME.

And then there's this other married friend whose wife is never around, and who also interacts with me in ways that definitely cross the line between platonic and intimate. This, of course, is more problematic, because as a single woman who isn't his shrink, I really have no business knowing about his marital troubles. I definitely am in no place to be dealing with his playful jealousy when other guys hit on me or accepting his offers to buy me drinks. I admit that I should be better about turning on my cold bitch mode and walk away the second he pulls any of this, but I also admit that I have more fun hanging out with than I do on most dates I've been on. A part of the reason we get along is precisely because he's married. He can feel free to divulge his inner feelings and play the part of a charmer without risking anything except for maybe a little bit of guilt, and I can also act as I feel, whether that is flattered or flippant, simply because I know our interactions can't mean anything so long as he is married. In some ass-backwards way, it is precisely the illicit nature of our interactions that allows each of us to act more naturally than we would were we simply two single people dating. In fact, when I bluntly told him that a married guy shouldn't be telling a single girl that she's hot, his reply was, "Maybe it's because I'm married that I can be honest." Oh, the irony. And the grossness.

It's no wonder that extramarital affairs are so common.

I refuse to indulge in such a cliche, not so much because of any adherence to some lofty sense of morals, but because of my selfish need to budget my emotional investments. A second spent thinking about some married dude is a second wasted. And that, I suppose, is the lesson I can take away from my experiment with this social butterfly strategy of mine: There are endless ways to waste one's emotional energy without the help of online dating sites.

So that's it. I give up. I'm probably better off joining a mah-jong club.

AsianGirlProf's (Mis)Adventures in Dating

A few years ago, there was an emergence of Asian American chick lit, with the release of books such as Kim Wong Keltner's The Dim Sum of All Things, Blossom Kan's China Dolls, and Sonia Singh's Bollywood Confidential. These novels are modeled after Sex and the City and Bridget Jones's Diary, but with Asian female protagonists. They center on 30-something-year-old professional women who enjoy designer shoes and fancy martinis, and who create adventures for themselves dating a bevy of (mostly non-Asian) men. Not exactly an original formula, and as the titles indicate, these books are also generally poorly written. Several of my Asian American girlfriends told me that I should have ridden that wave and written my own chick lit novel as a way to vent my dating frustrations. Too bad I was busy writing my dissertation (pesky scholarly work of intellectual value) and missed that boat. I guess I'll have to settle for writing my own Tiger Mom novel before that storm passes.

Still, given that every other aspect of my life is hopelessly boring, I probably should write about my experiences circulating in the dating pool. That way, even the worst date won't turn out to be a total waste of time, so long as a good story comes out of it. I can't promise that my writing will be any good, either. I don't have that breezy writing voice that's most suited for this genre, and I'm perhaps too self-conscious about exploiting ethnic stereotypes for the sake of entertainment. But at the very least my stories will come from the perspective of a 30-something-year-old professional woman who can't afford the shoes she covets, who will often prefer a beer over a martini, and who tends to (either on purpose or not) date nerdy Asian men. Doesn't exactly sound like juicy blogging fodder, but might be a fun experiment anyway.

Once I figure out where I want to begin, I'll post Chapter One!

On Turning 30

I have been 30 years old for exactly one month now. I was never under any impression that being officially in my thirties would feel any different than being in my late-twenties, though I was preparing myself for the possibility of an emotional crisis. A google search for "30 year old women" pulls up pages on how 30 year old women feel about being single, 30 year old women and fertility, how 30 year old women should dress for their age, what kinds of beauty products 30 year old women should invest in. It's as if the world has somehow set 30 as the threshold for when a woman should start feeling anxious about getting old and undesirable.

Upon turning 30, I decided to jump into the dating pool and start online dating. And indeed, some of my experiences browsing profiles and chatting with men in the network have confirmed the kinds of anxieties that, as a 30-year-old woman, I'm made to feel. Time and again I see men my age who want to date younger women. One 30-old-dude specifically listed 18-19 as his preferred age range. (Gross.) And time and again men my age and older will list their preferred age range as 21-29: old enough to drink, but not as old as 30! Thinking about how search engines work, I figure that I must not even pop up in some men's search results, now that I belong to an entirely different age bracket. One guy I talked to even asked me point-blank, "So, why is a 30-year-old woman such as yourself still single?" (What I should have said: "Because 30-year-old men like you have not learned to appreciate a woman like me.")

I suppose I could just adopt a dozen cats, start taking Boniva and resign myself to my spinsterhood, but I've discovered one beauty in being 30: I am now the age when I really don't give a shit anymore.

The last time I tried online dating, I was 22, and, like now, just started a new phase of my life in a new place. Still informed by the absurdity of college dating-- hooking up with gross dudes at frat parties, falling into "friends with benefits" mode with a dormmate, being the prey of older men as the youngest girl at the bar-- I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do whenever a guy asked me out. I was nervous about what to write for my profile, what photo to select for my profile pic. I felt the need to be nice and answer every message I received. I went on many bad dates and didn't always recognize soon enough when a guy was a douchebag. The whole experience got so overwhelming that I quit before finding anyone special on the network.

I can't say that I like online dating any more now than I did then, or that I don't feel somewhat self-conscious about how I interact with the men I meet. But I am definitely better at not taking anything guys say or don't say too personally, at not trying so hard to be attractive, at not tolerating bullshit. Because the fact of the matter is, now that I'm 30, I am in such a good place right now. I have a PhD. I have a great job. I've had a couple of real relationships under my belt and have learned from heartbreak. I know what I believe in and what I want out of life and what kind of man I want to be part of the picture. My self-worth does not rest on the idea of a man sweeping me off my feet, because I enjoy the fact that my feet are firmly planted on the ground.

As a romantic at heart, I would like to fall head over heels in love with a man who thinks that I'm amazing. But I can now say that I am excited about the prospect of looking for him, precisely because I know that I'll be just fine should I never find him. When you've had the chance to build your life on your own, letting someone else into it becomes a lovely bonus rather than the condition of your happiness.

So bring on the 30s, I say! And good riddance to my 20s. What I have to look forward to in my 30s: getting tenure, making a name for myself, and knowing how to pick the men out of the boys. It's going to be awesome.

Open Letter

Dear Econ Grad Student With Whom I Went On Two Really Awkward Dates About a Million Years Ago,

I'm very flattered that you still remember me and my name, because, quite frankly, I would not have recognized you had you sat next to me at the bar. And it's very cool of you to come up and talk to me, however briefly. That's way cooler than the friggin' owner of the bar, whom I had also dated about half a million years ago, who likes to pretend that he doesn't know me, even though I've patronized his establishment regularly for the past 8 years. Thank you, too, for offering to buy me a drink. Had I not already been drinking for much of the night, I would have accepted the offer.

But my saying, "Thanks, but I've already had a few beers tonight" doesn't necessarily mean that you need to cut the conversation short and just scamper off. You could have said, "How about I get you a Coke, then?" Or just continued chatting with me while I sipped at my glass of water. You could reciprocate my question of, "So, have you finished your degree?" with that very same question. Instead, you chose to randomly tell me that you spent some time in China (Was I supposed to be impressed by that fact? Because I'm Chinese and you're white?), and then ended the conversation without asking me what I've been up to. The fact that you then ran away with your tail between your legs only reminds me of why each of our two dates was really friggin' awkward, and why I was relieved when you didn't come around asking for a third.

What is up with dudes like you and the complete lack of follow-through? If you want to talk to me, just talk to me. If you want to buy me a drink, go ahead and do so. If you want to ask me out, just ask. Unless you're a major creeper (like the dude who introduced himself to me by saying, "I'm a pharmacist; What type of birth control are you on?"), I generally won't bite your head off or give you the cold shoulder. I will be my usual friendly, conversational self, as I believe I was with you tonight. I may decline your offer should you ask me out, but that's a risk that we all take, right? Grow some huevos and just take it.

I suppose it doesn't really matter that you totally punked out, given that I had already decided a million years ago that I didn't want to date you or even be friends. But you just reminded me of why I find meeting people so frustratingly exhausting. I cannot tell you how many times I've encountered guys who would initiate and then suddenly veer off course. I used to think that there must have been something wrong with me, that I was suddenly off-putting, that I smelled bad and didn't know it, that I was like that woman from that one episode of Seinfeld who suddenly looked ugly in a shift of lighting. But now, I really don't think that's the case. I'm fucking charming. And always polite. I have impeccable hygiene. So I have to assume that when guys who talk to me run away as if I were the plague, there's something wrong with them.

And you know, I'd might as well apply that assumption to men whom I actually do end up dating. Because the follow-through is key there as well. I've been dumped by a guy who decided after one year into our relationship that he "wasn't sure" if he was ever in love with me. I've been dumped by a guy who acted as though he couldn't get enough of me and then never talked to me again, not even to say "Thanks" when I sent him an email wishing him a happy birthday. I don't walk into every relationship believing that it will end in "happily ever after," but I do think that people should own their choices and actions. When I say that I want a follow-through, I mean that I simply don't want a relationship to end with a "WTF?" It is possible to break up with someone without making them feel as though the whole relationship was a lie. And it is possible, and even comforting, to convey to someone that you care about them even after the relationship is over. Certainly, taking off like a bat out of hell may seem to be the less messy of alternatives. But it also makes you a spastic asshole.

But I digress. What I meant to say was simply this: Thank you for validating my M.O., which is to no longer suffer wishy-washy boys kindly. I want and deserve a man who knows what he wants, and who knows that he wants me.

Best,

Me