My strangest experience on Tinder was in Sichuan. Dunno why but I got >100 matches in 12 minutes, a truly bizarre experience, felt like my guts were getting swizzled with hot gravel. But something worse approaches.
I weirdly start resenting them, even the ones I’m swiping right on. Hypocrite.
It’s like binging popcorn.
Someone better is always just a few swipes away, so I barely care for those in front of me. Weird rush, more than just a re-up.
Mistake.
I invited 2 strangers to the same date. I told them the other was coming and they said yes.
Who am I? What have I become?
Chinese culture is more American than America. The nightclub booth had hydraulic pumps that you could pay by the inch to raise. How else would they know you’re baller?
Both of them arrived within a minute of the agreed time, a surprise since I’m used to people being 10 minutes late to everything thanks to living in the Bay Area.
One beelined me, grabbed my cheeks with her palms, and yelled “YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL”.
Tryna pay attention to 2 different people same date is a great way to whiplash bodymind. I kept turning my head to track them, but my mind was in the previous conversation, and at some point I jumbled their details together. Botched async queue. But for once, I was the desirable one, so I didn’t mind so much in the moment. It’s better than nice to be wanted, it’s fucking delicious. After, my soul felt like I drank bleach. But that night, my soul was evicted to wander the streets cold and alone.
When Marzo eventually closed the doors on the second day, he calculated that his iron-bound cashbox now held at least a third of the coined money in the colony. He sat down in his chair behind the counter, feeling exhausted, exhilarated and more than a little scared.
Freaked me out man.
I don’t have a good answer for this. Picking badly seems pretty terrible to me. But like any other fear, fear of having picked wrong blinds you once you actually are in the relationship, because you’re therethen which is in the wherewhen. Not herenow.
In a past relationship, I did this. I was afraid my partner was the wrong one, so rather than trying to expand our relationship and sharing myself, I held back for fear that one day I would move on and moving on would really hurt if I had given more of myself. And then I felt lonely and complained to my diary rather than doing something about it. Not taking action led to my self-respect dropping, which led to all sorts of other problems. So much suffering caused by flinching away from a fear. Now I earnestly agree with Marianne Williamson: we’re held back by the love we don’t extend now.
Trying to only find the “right” people feels fake and is a really hard standard to meet, so it leads to suffering if you attach to that desire, which is really really easy to attach to.
Life’s not a romcom, and if both partners live seeking for Mr(s). Right, it’s gonna create a lot of transverse crossings in their Worldvolumes. 2 people who sorta hang out but won’t go deeper with another since they’re on the lookout for the next, better option.
How much of the the rise in poly relationships is this a symptom of? Most of the polycules I know that seem truly happy, inside and out, seem to be made up of middle aged people who grew up around Santa Cruz and have been doing it for 30 years. None of them are conventionally attractive. They remind me of homeschoolers and Renaissance fair attendees. I like them.
Another segment I know is much closer to my age, reads a lot about polyamory, and are as analytical as medieval history fans, but don’t care about medieval history. They talk about communication a lot, and they talk a lot about communication. I don’t see much communication. I think they sought freedom but mostly found separateness. Some set unilateral rules, both for themselves and for others, but often those rules aren’t put out into the world, and it’s like watching cringe standup.
Life isn’t a movie at all, but a video game. In a movie, there’s a specific ending in mind, and the whole movie builds up to that. Anything else is going Off Script. Video games can have goals, checkpoints, endings. But there’s not such a sense of being Off Script. There isn’t some set path to any of those. You play it forward and try to keep your wits about you and adapt.
In practice, there’s a tension between the backward direction of deciding whether your actions meet your goals, and the forward direction of actually acting. But only pulling on one side is stopmotion for life, not living.
For me, living forwards is hard. I feel confused, and even with a goal, following it is full of uncertainty. But I find that it makes me pay attention, and I find peace in the moment, in the form of life. Moving with the flow of the process is more fun than trying to stop it, cut it into pieces, and decide which path will take me straight to the end, all before I’ve even ridden along it once.
Living backwards is even harder. Middle Path isn’t a line but a fractal.
Feeling incompetent
Dating someone and showing your flaws in front of them is scary. Vulnerability is something appreciated in small to medium doses, but not so much in larger ones, since people (understandably) don’t want to pick up anothers’ broken pieces.
The pressure to be competent at all times can lead to avoiding deeper relationships. I know several people who always say they’re fine, and I’d bet any amount that they’re not. But they won’t open about it. And their dating lives are a separated space, lots of distinct encounters without continuity between any. 2 of them seem fine with this. The rest reek of a sort of quiet desperation. And it is a reek, a subtle miasma like a sauna.
I see some dates where both people seem as guarded as knights in full plate armor. Neither will open up for fear they open too much, and instead of a date have a sort of polite conversation.
consumer goods
A lot of the current model reminds me of consumer goods. They’re bought and expected to work out of the box (so false). We want our partners to complement us perfectly, quickly if not immediately. If you buy something you don’t like, you can return it and shop around for better options, and there’s a lot of other options, so odds are that at least one is better. Leaving a better deal lying on the table feels wrong in both cases.
hot and cold
Katy Perry’s “Hot and Cold” has a bit about an induced behavior of this. Even though people often want better options, they don’t want to give up the one they already have.
You don’t really want to stay, no
But you don’t really want to go
Breaking up with someone before looking anew is also scary, and painful. Breakups are usually unfun, unless you’ve become really vicious to each other, and if you have, I wish I could give you a hug.
You don’t really want to stay, no
But you don’t really want to go
The pain of being alone is pretty acute, and the anxiety of not finding another makes the search harder. At least for men, confidence is something partners value disproportionately highly, and anxiety drops confidence like a rock. That translates to Unsuccess ‒much worse than failure‒ in dating, which drops confidence further, and can lead to the feeling that something is wrong with you, and before you know it you’re in a negative spiral.
Ironically, the apathy this conditions while still in a relationship makes leaving it hard and trying in a new one hard because everything’s hard when you don’t care.
Is it better or worse than pretending to care about someone? I don’t know. Both hurt.
I don’t have anything more to say for myself now, so how about another life I’ve obsessed over?
Bertrand Russell died before I was born. But reading his romantic life, so much detail shows depressingly familiar.
Russell didn’t seem to find peace in his first 3 relationships.
When he ceased to love a woman, he ceased to love her totally, and usually he wanted no more to do with her.
His present role of a fallen angel with Mephistophelian wit, and his brilliantly analytic and scoffing intellect, makes him stimulating company. All the same, I look back on this vision of an old friend with sadness. He may be successful as a littérateur; I doubt whether he will be of value as a thinker, and I am pretty well certain he will not attain happiness of love given and taken
Maybe he felt but kept it to himself, hardening his heart =(. There’s exes I don’t talk with. But to totally cease to feel something that strong totally, I’ve yet to experience.
I think he had luck with his last relationship.