Musings on Life and Love

Photo by Wettly via Flickr

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re at a party and find yourself talking to a friend’s friend. He seems really cool and makes you laugh, but honestly, you don’t find him all that attractive. Later, he asks if you want to hang out sometime. You agree… hesitantly. Then you make an excuse to leave before he can ask for your number.

Been there, done that? Then, like me, you’ve suffered from a type of romantic tunnel vision, where you lose all interest in hanging out with someone you don’t immediately see as romantic potential.

The problem with this behavior is that we need friends of the opposite sex. They help us see life from another perspective. That guy asking to hang out may be looking for something more, but he could just as well end up becoming a friend.

I go to my guy friends for their unbiased (or sometimes totally biased) opinions on everything from dating to whether I’m too fat to wear a bikini. Unlike the girls who will undoubtedly answer, “no you look great, really,” the guys will give me their honest opinions and often offer a fresh point of view.

It’s hard to explain the differences between relationships with your girl friends and relationships with your guy friends without getting into stereotypes. But it is a unique relationship I’ve learned to value as I’ve gotten older.

The most obvious example? When I need to know all the stats on the new Padres’ pitcher or an update of the Charger’s season, I get my guy friends to give me the Cliff notes version.

But more than just for sports, guy friends can be like cultural translators. Thanks to my brother’s friends for example, I can totally speak “geek.” Read more…

Photo by Marley Musella

One of my pet peeves is the single person who hates being partnerless. Hollywood loves to play up the stereotype of the woman who is desperate for anyone to love her. Sadly, a lot of my friends fit right into this cliché. They hate going to special occasions without a date on their arm. Or they complain about being the only unattached person on the planet, which is how life appears from their perspective.

So, I’d like to offer a different perspective. While I look forward to meaningful relationships in my future, I enjoy dating. Yes, someday I hope to find “the one.” But, in the meantime, I relish the chance to get wild on the dance floor and represent “all the single ladies.”

Here are a few reasons I love being single:

1. Social Currency

How often does anyone ask if there are going to be any nice married couples at the party? I’ve yet to hear it. Instead, my very presence as one of the cute single women (or at least one with a great personality, hopefully) increases the potential fun of any social gathering. Parties have a different energy when people have the possibility of meeting the man or women of their dreams… or at least finding someone cute to talk to or make out with later on. Simply being available increases our value as social currency.

2. Ogling Season

The entire season of summer seems designed with the single person in mind. Surfers out of their wetsuits. Guys jogging without their shirts, and girls in bikinis. Cute neighbors by the pool. Basically, it’s ogling season, and when we’re single, we can look and appreciate without anyone getting jealous. Read more…

Photo by HerLanieShip via Flickr

My friend has embarked on the noble journey of making himself into the “Perfect 10.” He figures that if he wants to date a woman he considers the ultimate match, he himself needs to be a perfect 10.

Everyone has their own idea of who their optimal mate is. My friend wants someone who is confident, sexual, financially-stable and many other remarkable and understandably desirable qualities. So, he is working on improving his own shortcomings in these areas.

I love the idea of self-improvement and becoming the best person you can be. There’s nothing like the self-confidence having a great job, a nice car, a fantastic body, stable finances and interesting hobbies gives you.

It’s a wonderful idea, reaching your full potential as a human being and meeting someone who meets all your requirements, who is simply right for you. But what happens when your exemplary partner loses his job or she gains 20 pounds? Read more…

Image by PhotograTree via flickr

The scene is familiar: I’m at a party chatting with a group of friends. Gradually, we draw in the nearby group of guys, and before long, I’m amiably discussing quantum physics or artificial intelligence or some other topic I’m completely unqualified to have any opinion on (but do, anyways).

Then, the conversation turns personal: what do you do, where do you live, do you have roommates? I suddenly feel like a sea anemone with bright flowery tentacles, trying to ensnare the unsuspecting innocent guppy into my trap.

“Actually,” I reply, “I’m a full-time single mom.” Often the expression on the guy’s face reminds me of a black and white mushroom cloud rising up after the bomb has been dropped.

When the smoke clears, drinks need to be refilled, a buddy needs to be found, and my friends and I start swapping stories about how absolutely adorable my three-year-old is. Disaster averted.

Every once in awhile, though, some poor fool is too distracted by the décolleté and short length of my dress to run screaming in the opposite direction. He gets my phone number, and inevitably, the question becomes, “so how does this work, dating a single mom?” Read more…

Image by pareerica via flickr

For me, they usually come quietly, stealthily sneaking upon me when my thoughts are elsewhere.

The close proximity, the smiles, the steady eye contact, the pressing of knees in the bar, or a careless hand resting just a moment on my feet snuggled under a blanket. Jokes, dimples, and shared confidences. Whatever the cause, butterflies flutter in my stomach, and I’m thinking about a guy in a way I never have before.

What are these butterflies? Attraction, a crush, love?

Zack, for instance, made my stomach twist, flip, and want to shout for joy the moment we met. Unfortunately, he left on a ship, for five months, a few weeks later. Think it’s grueling waiting a week for the person you like to call you? Waiting five months to see what those feelings really were was torture.

These insects of attraction flit about, blind to what is healthy and careless of the past or future with an individual. Read more…

Art by mollycakes via flickr

Some women go through relationships like shoes; I go through men like jobs. I’ve had 29 jobs since I started working when I was 16. I’m not even going to try counting the guys I’ve had crushes on, dated, or hooked up with. My longest job lasted a year and a half, my longest relationship approximately four months.

These days it seems whenever I get together with my friends, they need a review: “Where are you working now? Which guy is this you’re dating?”

Breaking up with the last guy who found such shortcomings in my job insecurity has induced me to muse upon the connections between my work and my love life.

Every new job and every new relationship forces introspection. When people ask me what I do, I tell them the exact description of the jobs I’m currently working. Lately, those jobs have included special education aide, tutor, English as a Foreign Language teacher and grant writing consultant. So, I was struck when my new boss-to-be looked at my resume and observed that I’d been teaching six years. It was longer than I thought.

Maybe this is why I dislike statistics. I know some people find comfort in the rules of math, the seeming hard facts that digits provide, but like so many aspects of life I find this data a matter of perspective. Read more…

Photo by Brett Arthur via Flickr

Heads turned when this very Hot Guy walked into the Halloween party I attended this year. Dimples to the heavens, sparkling, mischievous eyes, and muscles a girl just can’t help but hang onto. Unfortunately, the illusion was quickly shattered by how obviously he wanted to get laid.

The first girl he struck up a conversation with hastily found a way out, groaning to us about how unattractive it is when a guy brings up sex within minutes of meeting. The rest of us concurred and didn’t bother conversing with him most of the night, though Hot Guy seemed to pervade the party.

Meanwhile two girls were in a flirting battle over the same “Nice” Guy, (who claimed to be single, but days later revealed that was just a part of his Halloween costume too), because he could actually hold his end of a conversation. Read more…

Photo by John Fraissinet via Flickr

When I broke up with the last guy I was dating, I tried to be polite about it. I told him he was nice, cute and fantastic—and he replied with a low blow about my “lack of stability.” Eww. He hurt my feelings, especially since I had tried to be amiable. I reacted by doing what I swore I would never do. I told him all the awful things I’d thought about him over the last month since it first occurred to me that maybe I didn’t want to date a guy who wore white shoes hiking and complained about them getting dirty.

I’m not usually such a bitch, but early on in our discussions, he’d said he didn’t see any point in staying in contact with the girls he dated once he’d broken up with them. So I felt I didn’t have anything to lose. If I’d thought we could be friends, I would have acted differently. Read more…

Photo by Ed Yourdon via Flickr

I felt complete awe when one of my best friends in college, who’d had a distant crush on a law student we referred to as Tattoo Boy, actually went home with him one night after a random encounter in a bar. I was less thrilled when she told me how he’d said good-bye the next morning: “Call me. My number is in the phone book.” While my friend puzzled over whether he actually expected her to look up his number and call, I sat fuming in righteous indignation on behalf of women everywhere.

Although I personally never laid eyes on Tattoo Boy, he had a long-lasting impact on my life. My older more mature self would like to say that I learned to have respect for other people’s feelings. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case at the time.

The first time a guy ever spent the night, I kicked him out so fast he barely had time to pull his shirt over his head. In my defense, during our brief few months of “friendship” he spent an equal amount of time flirting with my friend (who had a boyfriend at the time) and spent even more time locking lips with her. How do you tell a guy, “sorry, but I actually think you’re a jerk and not worth my time?” He called repeatedly over the next few days, saying what a good time he’d had, but I was too chicken to pick up and tell him the truth. Plus, he deserved it. Didn’t he? Read more…

Photo by Kit Haselden

As a kid, I used to watch the surfers riding the curls on the other side of the checkered flag with such envy; they made it seem so effortless. These days I look at my friends in long-term relationships with the same jealousy. Yet, ask a skilled surfer to teach you to surf or a blissful couple how to date, and their instructions tend to be vague and unhelpful. They started young and have been at it for so long, they don’t really think about what they are doing, they just do it.

Having started surfing in my early 20s and dating in my late 20s, I’ve really had to concentrate on the learning process of these two challenging activities. The processes of going from that first date to being in a bona fide relationship and going from catching that first wave to being recognized as a surfer have a lot in common.

Learning with Another Rookie

The first time I attempted surfing, my older brother borrowed his friend’s longboard, and we spent the day taking turns out on the waves. I watched him keel over, he watched me take multiple nose dives, and at the end of the day I wasn’t any closer to learning to surf than I had been at the beginning.

My first relationship attempt was similar. Read more…