Category Archives: Relationships

Dating, New York Feminist Style

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My research assistant sent me this article in Elle magazine, which asks a bunch of women who, to me, all seem the same about dating in a “post-Harvey Weinstein world”.

Here’s a flavour of the responses:

I don’t just march misogynists into my life. My screening process is intense. I ask a lot of questions and try my best to carefully analyze the photos of anyone I meet. A sampling of inquiries include: What do you do? Where do you live? Where are you from? Who did you vote for? Do you have tree nut allergies? Etc. Still, when I add up all the dates I’ve been on this year, including the good ones, what I remember is: The casual racism, the constant interruptions, the arrogance, the insistence that he knows best about literally anything and everything.

So screening men with questions like “Who did you vote for?” lands you on dates with racist, misogynistic assholes? Heh. Want to tell us how they answered?

A date recently asked me ‘where I was from’ after telling me I had ‘an exotic look.’ When this kind of nonsense happens I cut it off right at the head. In response to this dude, I just went silent, too angry to even engage.

You’ve just told us you filter men by asking where they’re from. A man asks you the same question and you seethe with rage. As for the “exotic” comment? Well, so what? Some women like being called exotic.

I’ve blocked more guys from more means of communication than I can count over the last 12 months.

Which speaks volumes.

Woke bae is out there somewhere … I remember things that my own father would say years ago that he would never say now and that’s because he’s got two razor-tongued daughters that continually check him at any opportunity … at the moment, I don’t have a concrete solution for this problem and I also don’t have a boyfriend either.

I can’t imagine why.

For example, I was talking on the phone with the guy I’ve been seeing for a few months…he was subjected to a long rant about how such reports often fall on deaf ears, how reporting often creates more conflict in the woman’s life than in the perpetrator’s, how shame is dealt unfairly in such situations.

Lucky him.

To him, I’m a whole person, my own universe, rather than simply a satellite in his universe—a first for me in a romantic relationship. But recently, I’ve often struggled to maintain composure and openness while explaining things to him that every woman I know understands intuitively.

Even luckier him.

My litmus test was simple: casually mention scandals in the media and gauge his reaction.

This is on a first date. Can you imagine an actual relationship with this person?

But above all, don’t, absolutely don’t go back with a guy to his apartment unless you want to engage in some sort of sexual activity—especially with the guy you only went on two dates with who said you would just watch a movie.

Finally someone’s said something sensible.

The article illustrates one of the most bewildering contradictions in modern times: the feminist idea that modern women should be carefree, promiscuous, powerful, go-girrrl high-flyers as portrayed in Sex and the City, while at the same time:

To be safe, you must follow the rules: Don’t leave your drink unattended or accept a drink from man, because he may roofie it. Don’t make eye contact with the guy who catcalls you on the street—he’ll just see it as an invitation to talk to you. Remember that creepy old doorman who tried to ask you out after seeing you pass his building on your way to the gym each morning? You haven’t forgotten how uncomfortable that made you feel, and it’s been months.

I’ve reached the conclusion most of them are barking mad.

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I Want, I Want, I Want

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There was time when folks used to entertain themselves by visiting loony bins and laughing at the antics of the inmates. Nowadays we have TV programs like Geordie Shore and BBC articles like this one:

Ten months ago, thirty-something Jessica was eager to get pregnant. A series of relationships had failed so she tried a radically new approach – she posted an advert online.

…

The request was posted on Craigslist, a website better known for second-hand goods.

A decent editor would have deleted that wholly superfluous “better”.

The potential father needed to be over 5ft 9in, under 40 and prepared to take an STD test. He would also be required to have “a few days of frequent sex”.

This woman would prefer her offspring to be tall rather than smart.

“Our grandparents didn’t spend years and years cohabiting and watching boxsets,” she says.

No. No, they didn’t. Which is why they didn’t have to resort to advertising on Craigslist.

“Starting a family was very much the goal of their endeavour.”

Indeed, they wanted a family and so got on with the job of making one rather than suddenly realising it at 30.

She’d also watched many of her friends start families after falling “madly in love”, only to split up later in a cloud of angry recriminations.

So her friends are unable to maintain lasting relationships, kids be damned? Why aren’t I surprised?

“I decided I could sacrifice romantic fulfilment as long as my child had two parents who loved and cared for them,” she says.

Because the relationship between the parents has no effect whatsoever on the child; what matters is the woman has what she wants.

She posted her advert on Craigslist while on a bus from her home in the suburbs into central London – and by the time she arrived at Oxford Street, she already had a number of replies.

From men who are more used to seeing such adverts with prices attached.

A year earlier, Jessica had been in a long-term relationship with David. Like her, he wanted children… but he was in no rush.

“He was aimless. He wanted to wait until he felt better about his life and his career. You just think, ‘Come on!'” Jessica says.

So he couldn’t get his life together, probably didn’t want children with her, and all she could do was think things to herself? Hurrah for female empowerment!

She had wanted children since she turned 30 and was envious of friends who were starting families.

I used to be like that. The feeling wore off after lunch.

She was also shaken by a visit to her aunt in hospital. Her aunt didn’t have children, and Jessica believed she had been ignored by doctors as there had been no-one to insist on better care.

“I thought there was a risk of me ending up in a similar situation if I had no kids of my own. They can act as insurance for when you get older.”

Firstly this kid will learn that its mother didn’t care who its father was. Then it will learn its primary purpose for being brought into this world was to ensure its mother is looked after when she’s old. The BBC takes no issue with this.

She ended her relationship with David in March 2016 and almost immediately started dating her colleague, Scott. He was keen to have a baby, but after six months of trying they had nothing to show for it. So they went to a GP, who suggested blood tests – and while Jessica’s results were clear, Scott’s revealed a range of fertility issues.

I can’t think of a single person who is more fortunate to be infertile. Trust me Scott old chap, the Gods are smiling on you.

“He didn’t react well to the news and basically fell apart. I didn’t feel I had the ability to support him through it,” Jessica says.

Meaning, he was no longer useful to her so she abandoned him.

“She asked, ‘Why would you spend £700 for sperm when you could go down to Yates’s [wine bar] and find someone who would gladly give you it for free?'” Jessica says.

It’s all class with our Jess.

She then started chatting to a single man on the website, until an insurmountable barrier got in the way – Brexit.

“He voted to leave Europe and I’m very much for remain,” Jessica says. “I said, ‘I’m not really sure we can parent like this.'”

She desperately wants a baby with practically anyone who can get it up, but draws the line at men who voted to leave the EU? This woman is fucking insane.

Jessica quit the website, which charged a monthly fee, and considered dating apps. But as a teacher she didn’t want to post a photograph of herself.

This train-wreck of a woman is a teacher?

“I didn’t want to use a dating website or Tinder in case a student saw a picture of me. Plus I knew Craigslist got a lot of traffic and was free to use,” she says.

The avoidance of monthly website fees being of utmost importance when searching for the father of your child.

“God, it sounds completely crazy looking back,” Jessica says.

I daresay it looked that way at the time, too.

She received a flurry of replies, including the obligatory slew of penis pictures.

She advertised free sex on Craiglist with almost no conditions. What was she expecting, flowers and a poem?

A number of men wrote claiming they had helped several women, which turned Jessica off.

“The last thing I needed was for my child to end up at a party and snog their sibling without knowing,” Jessica says.

Just try to imagine the thought process that led to her making this statement.

Another young man wrote to say he was desperate for a baby after his previous partner had a miscarriage. Jessica felt he was too vulnerable.

In other words, he might need something from her.

Then she received an email from Ross.

“He was 33 and also lived in London. He said he’d had some disastrous relationships but he loved being an uncle and wanted children of his own,” Jessica says.

Because nothing makes for a better father than a man with a series of disastrous relationships behind him.

They discovered they were of different faiths

Uh-oh. Swarthy foreigner? What do you reckon?

but agreed they wanted a “London approach” to religion.

Any problems are just part and parcel of living in a big city?

“We agreed there was one God who loved pretty much everybody and we would want a child to be comfortable with people of any faith or no faith.”

Before the boy was circumcised at the father’s insistence. Jessica wanted to object, but didn’t want another black eye.

Ross was very involved during the pregnancy and accompanied Jessica to hospital appointments. It wasn’t all plain sailing, though.

They clashed about who got to keep the original ultrasound pictures and whether to spend money finding out the sex of the baby early.

“Ross” didn’t want a girl, only a boy?

The couple told their parents Jessica was expecting a baby after the pregnancy had lasted 12 weeks, but didn’t reveal how they had met.

I have a feeling they’ll find out soon enough, under less rosy circumstances.

The couple have now been together just under a year and parents for two months. They are still discovering new things about each other.

Two months. Right.

What annoys me about these articles is they are presented without any scrutiny of such issues as the effect this arrangement will have on the child, or the fact that the woman’s own disastrous life choices have forced her into this. And we never get to read of the aftermath, when the entire situation unravels in a manner which could have been easily predicted by anyone with a brain. All we get is positive puff-pieces like this, while the costs of such lunacy are foisted on the rest of society.

(H/T My Burning Ears in the comments and @wibble80 on Twitter)

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Inside the Mind of a Polyamorous Woman

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Oh look, another puff-piece on polyamory, this time from The Guardian:

It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to say to my husband, Marc. Three years ago, I sat down and told him: “The idea of having sex just with you for the next 40 years – I can’t do it any more.” But I had come to realise that my life was built around something I didn’t believe in: monogamy.

We had been together for 12 years and had two children, now nine and seven.

Can you imagine a guy saying this to the mother of his children? Well, actually I can, it does happen, often following an assignment to Russia or a golf trip to Thailand, but such stories rarely get featured in The Guardian.

I love being a mother and I set the bar high from the start – cloth nappies and cooking from scratch. But I needed something more in my emotional and sexual life.

Oh, so it’s all about you. Got it.

Marc’s reaction was remarkable; he agreed to support me and open our marriage to other partners, although it wasn’t really what he wanted.

Perhaps he was concerned you would initiate a divorce leaving him penniless, homeless, and unable to see much of his children? At the end of this piece, Marc gets his say:

I did a lot of reading around the subject of ethical non-monogamy. It makes a lot of sense intellectually, but it doesn’t resonate with me emotionally. It didn’t feel right. I was prepared for our marriage to continue, with me being monogamous and Anita having other partners, but that proved more difficult than we envisaged.

So he dreaded the prospect and found it was even harder than he imagined? This I can believe. Why is his wife putting him through this, exactly? Oh, we know already: she doesn’t give a shit about anyone other than herself. As she says:

Sex is a big part of a relationship, but it is only a part. We didn’t want it to scupper us.

The only thing I can see scuppering this relationship is her sense of entitlement.

I quickly embraced the dating scene and discovered another side of my sexual self.

I’ll leave my readers to guess what she means by that.

I think most people’s reaction was that Marc should have kicked me out.

If the divorce laws weren’t so stacked against him, I suspect he’d have done just that.

People who choose to be polyamorous often do so after delving deep into themselves and their desires, so it runs close to the kink scene, which was also something I wanted to explore. There’s a temptation to think that, had Marc and I explored these things together, our marriage might have worked without opening it up. I’m not sure that it would have, though, given that he wasn’t into it. It can seem quite intimidating, but I was so ready for it. The first time I went to a fetish club, I felt like I was at home – that I’d found my people.

I can’t help thinking people ought to work all this stuff out before they get married and have kids.

I now have a partner of two years, Andrea.

Oh, she’s hooked up with a swarthy foreigner. How original.

We work as a couple, but we also have sex with friends. He’s the only partner I have introduced to my children. I love Andrea and I’m very lucky to have him, but I don’t want to live with him – we both value our solitude too much. He and I can flirt with other people and ask for their number, but I still feel jealous sometimes. He went away with another woman and, yes, it was difficult.

My research on polyamorous people has led me to believe they engage in the practice to address issues which might better be dealt with in other ways. The above paragraph doesn’t do much to convince me I’m wrong on this.

Meanwhile, Marc and I realised we were no longer compatible. I had changed too much. We still share the family home and parent our children together. We still get on. We have counselling together, we spend Christmas together – we are still reading and learning as we used to. We wanted to keep all the bits that worked.

I suspect in reality this woman has told her husband they are no longer compatible, and “the bits that worked” are those that she relies on him to pay for.

We have had to learn so much about communicating better, and I think the children have benefited from that. We have explained that Dad needs one person to be with and Mum needs more people to make her happy. The talk is ongoing; we won’t wait to sit them down when they are teenagers, expecting them suddenly to get it.

And if they don’t? Well, who cares? Let’s see how they turn out after spending their teenage years with their mother chasing multiple lovers around.

You can craft your own polyamory, but I’m not sure I would want more than two or three other partners. I’m hoping two people I met recently will become lovers, but there’s no rush. People assume that I’m constantly having sex, but it’s not as simple as that. I want an emotional and mental connection with someone, so it takes time to build up to that.

But it is, mostly, about sex.

Monogamy, meanwhile, feels more like a competition where you need to bag someone before anyone else does. None of that applies in a poly setup, which is incredibly liberating.

There’s no doubt being free to fuck around as much as you please is liberating; the problem is in doing so you lose the benefits of a monogamous relationship. It’s a trade off, and one that most people figure out in their mid-twenties.

Think how strange it would be to have only one friend. You can’t get everything from one platonic relationship. Why would you try with one lover?

The few hundreds of millions of people who do just that might argue certain benefits come from a monogamous relationship, and trying to “get everything” is a fool’s errand. But what would they know?

On top of that, the amount of work involved in maintaining multiple relationships, sexual and platonic, is huge.

I’m sure none of this will impact the care and attention she gives to her kids.

Andrea and I look to the future, but there are no expectations.

I imagine Andrea made that point very clear from the outset.

I don’t see myself sitting on a park bench at 80 with one other person.

Oh, nor do I. I imagine you’ll be very much alone.

We seem to want a silver bullet for everything.

Says the woman who thinks polyamory is the answer to what looks like normal marriage blues combined with quite staggering selfishness on her part.

Appetite, a novel by Anita Cassidy, is published by RedDoor at £8.99.

Oh, this woman has a book on polyamory to flog? As it happens, so do I. Do you think The Guardian will run a puff-piece on my novel?

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Where have all the good men gone?

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Behold the agonies of a Guardian reader, who is looking for a man:

I am 31, with a successful career, friends, my own home and a close family, but I struggle to find relationships with men.

What’s that “but” doing there? Men, in the main, don’t care if a woman has a successful career or her own home (unless he’s a bum), and they are as likely to see friends and a close family as drawbacks rather than assets. How many of your mates are also single?

Now the time has come where I want to settle down.

At 31 the men in her dating pool will be between 33 and 40. She can find one who is handsome, smart, and single: pick any two.

I usually meet men online, though never really pass date three – this often being my decision. I find it difficult to “fancy” men I have met online, though I have fancied those I’ve met in real life. Sadly these encounters recently have led no further.

Translation: the men I want to be with are already married. All that’s left are men I don’t want to be with.

I usually find it’s the same reason I end up finishing with men online. They were not confident enough, not willing to take a lead, and I don’t feel sexually attracted to them.

If they were confident and willing to take the lead, they’d have snaffled a partner long ago. Remember those guys who used to chat you up when you were 25 but you turned down? Not looking so bad now, are they?

I really want a long-term relationship that leads to family life, but I don’t know how to find it.

This is a bit like a 31 year old man deciding he wants a military career.

The advice she receives isn’t bad, but it isn’t half dressed up:

First, change your criteria. If you’re looking for a long and meaningful relationship instant sexual frisson might need to slip down your priority list.

In other words, she needs to drop the lofty standards she believes she’s entitled to and come to terms with the fact that she’s going to have to select from the blokes who are sat in front of her, not the married men in the office.

You should never force yourself to endure a physical relationship with someone you don’t fancy, but it can take more than one date for people to reveal themselves.

Underneath that beer gut and bald plate is a wonderful personality.

It might be better to pause your rigorous appraisal process and learn to make friends first.

A veiled reference to the modern woman’s 277 bullet-point list of requirements every partner must satisfy.

I suspect your determination to secure a lasting relationship could be the very reason it’s eluding you.

Your expectations are unrealistic, and you come across as desperate.

Life can’t be programmed to deliver the moment we want it to. We have to embrace the mystery and surprises along with the frustrations.

It’s not going to just land in your lap, dear. You need to work on this a little, starting with yourself.

This young lass could have saved herself the trouble of writing to the Guardian by listening to Grandma.

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A Murder in Beirut

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Back when I lived in Dubai I spent an evening in my flat in the company of three women: an Australian, a Russian, and an Uzbek (who was staying with me at the time). We were sat around my bar drinking tequila when the Russian, who was in her mid-twenties, started telling us about the problems she was having with her boyfriend, a Lebanese chap. Two nights previously she had gone out for a drink with another Russian woman and started receiving text messages from her boyfriend. As the night wore on the messages got increasingly angry and accusatory – a pattern which many women (and men) will know well. By the time she went home, rather distressed, her boyfriend was openly accusing her of going home with another man. She went to bed and heard a pounding on the door. Then she heard glass breaking. She went downstairs to find her boyfriend had put his fist through a window and was shaking with jealous rage. She let him in and he belted her one, but after much sobbing they both calmed down. She told us she didn’t know whether she should stay with him and try to work through his anger issues. At this point I asked how long they’d been together. Two weeks, she said. I reached for another tequila.

When I lived in Dubai I heard a lot of stories about women, particularly British and Russians, getting involved with Arabic men and things getting ugly. I know a Russian woman who unwisely entered into a relationship with an Egyptian waiter who regularly beat the shit out of her in a jealous rage; she at least had the sense and courage to eventually leave him. Just as Anglo-Saxon men go funny in the head around Asian women, and Frenchmen lose their senses in Africa, European women often get all giddy over swarthy Middle Easterners. (There’s a theory that this explains why white, liberal women vote to allow more refugees and migrants in, and there is probably some truth in it – stories like this certainly lend weight to the theory, anyway.)

I remember taking an English girl out on a date in Dubai and the first thing she did when she got into my car was turn off the bluegrass, switch to the radio, and retune the damned thing! She entered some station called Habibi (love, in Arabic) and explained the songs alternate between English and Arabic and she and her Lebanese ex used to listen to it. Bear in mind we’d barely left the car park at this point. She breathlessly went on about how charming the Lebanese are, and how romantic they can be, but he was shagging anything that moved and she dumped him (or him her, I wasn’t paying much attention). I’ll leave you to guess how the rest of the date went. I also met up with a Ukrainian girl who within minutes handed me a photo album four inches thick. I flicked through pictures of what looked like a group of gangsters in tracksuits stood beside a murky river a mile wide (this was her family on holiday) and found myself wading through a hundred photos of some dodgy looking Lebanese stood beside a pimped-out Camaro. She then rabbited on about how this guy was the love of her life, and very charming, and bought her flowers, and…you get the picture. Only he was “crazy”.

Now I actually got to know some of the Lebanese men in Dubai, one of whom became a good mate of mine (I stayed with him and his family in Beirut in 2010). He told me two things. Firstly, Lebanese men are only interested in serious relationships with Lebanese women, ones who their family will approve of. There are a few exceptions, but it’s a general rule that Lebanese men intend to marry a Lebanese woman (preferably a virgin) at some point, but until then they want to shag as many loose women as they can, regardless of quality. The Lebanese are descended from Phoenicians, and are first and foremost traders. The thing they like selling most of all is themselves, and Lebanese men are particularly gifted at telling gullible western women exactly what they want to hear in order to get them into bed. British men, when viewed alongside, seem plodding and unromantic. Secondly, my friend said a lot of the Lebanese men you encounter are rather low-class, hailing from farms in the mountains rather than universities in Beirut.

There’s something I observed, and learned the hard way myself, in my travels around the world. Working out the class background of somebody is extremely difficult if you’re not from their culture. I can pick out a British chav in seconds simply by the clothes, habits, and vocabulary. I’ve learned to do it with Russians too, but that took some time. Otherwise, if I’m honest, I have no idea who’s who when I first encounter them. This poses a problem for men turning up in Thailand, for example. They have no idea that the girl they met in the bar is actually a peasant from the jungle on the Cambodian border who grew up in hut and has four years of schooling. Middle-class Thai women exist, but they don’t mingle with foreigners on holidays and sure as hell don’t dance on tables in bars in Pattaya and go home with some fat fuck on the back of a scooter. A lot of the guys who turned up in Sakhalin didn’t realise the pretty, seemingly-classy women they fell in love with spoke a rough version of Russian littered with profanity and grammatical errors – something which would mark them out as lower-class in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

When I was in Lagos I had a colleague who was British-Nigerian, and he’d married a British-Nigerian woman. She came out to visit for a while and joined us at the pool in the Eko Hotel. There’s a bar area next to it which is a favourite spot for the local prostitutes to pick up expats, and my colleague’s wife saw this and her eyes went wide. What stunned her was that these western men were talking and canoodling with absolute, low-grade peasant women, the types ordinary Nigerians stay well clear of. Being a middle-class Nigerian she could see what class of women they were, but the expat men couldn’t. She was still talking about how shocked she was when she came to leave two weeks later. Similarly, my well-educated and middle-class Turkish friend is absolutely astounded by the willingness of British and Russian women to sleep with Turkish barmen, waiters, and boatmen who come from remote villages in the country’s east and can barely read, write, and hold cutlery. These women would never in a million years be interested in some villager from their own countries, but faced with a swarthy foreigner they can’t pick his class and are blinded by the exoticism. The same was true for the girls who dated Lebanese men in Dubai.

This is all a very long-winded prelude to my comments on this story:

Police in Lebanon investigating the murder of a British woman who worked at the UK embassy in Beirut have arrested a man, a source has said.

…

Ms Dykes, who is believed to have been in her early 30s, had been working in Beirut as the programme and policy manager for the Department for International Development since January 2017.

It is thought Ms Dykes had spent Friday evening at a going-away party for a colleague in the popular Gemmayzeh district of Beirut, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Martin Patience said.

After leaving the bar at about midnight it appears she was abducted. Her body was found close to a motorway on the outskirts of the city.

What I’m about to say is complete speculation, and I may be completely wrong. It may well be that Ms Dykes was jumped by a complete stranger when alone outside a nightclub in Beirut and murdered, that is indeed possible. But I’ve been to Beirut and it’s not really that kind of place, especially where expats hang out. There is terrorism there, and political violence and kidnappings, but it’s never been known as a place that’s unsafe for foreign women. Your average Lebanese is a pretty decent sort and if a western woman has been abducted and murdered fresh off the street it is a very unusual occurence.

Which makes me think she knew the guy who killed her. Whereas I can’t imagine a Lebanese guy deciding to abduct a stranger, I can well believe a Lebanese guy could fly into a rage and murder his western girlfriend. Let’s do some more speculation, the kind of which her family wouldn’t want to read. She’s around 30 and there’s no mention of a husband or kids, so we can assume she was single. She works for the Department of International Development so she’s probably a bit of a lefty, maybe a do-gooder type. Lefty, do-gooder women in their 30s often have this bizarre belief that the greatest danger to their well-being is from old, white men and foreign thugs won’t hurt them. Indeed, I’d hazard a guess that any sexual harassment training women get in the Department of International Development – even in the embassy in Beirut – talks more about white men making lewd remarks than foreign thugs who view western women as nothing more than sluts.

So here’s my guess. She arrived in Lebanon in January and started frequenting the expat bars and nightclubs. At some point she’s got into a relationship with a local (or perhaps someone from a nearby country) without having any idea what the guy was like, or his history. She’d have been blinded by the initial charm and exoticism, and assumed he was the same as the educated Lebanese she’d met at work. The embassy would – like everyone else – have heard plenty of horror stories about western women who get entangled with the wrong sort of local men, but don’t want to actually warn their staff about it as that would deviate from the approved narrative. The result is a dead employee.

We probably won’t ever hear the truth about this case and I might be completely wrong anyway, but I reckon the smart money is on the killer being someone she was (or had been) romantically involved with and he won’t have a university degree.

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From whence the anger?

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Today somebody actually replied to my question on Twitter as to whether the unpaid work done by men gets counted when declaring that women are suffering under the crippling burden of housework, which I wrote about here. Sadly, it wasn’t from the study’s author but a deranged feminist:

Can you imagine being in a relationship with such a person? I can’t, and I think it would be a safe bet that this woman has never had a stable, functioning relationship in her life. I post this because having spent a year or so exploring modern feminism, or third-wave feminism as it’s often called, I have reached the conclusion that much of it is driven by women whose personalities are too poisonous for them to build a relationship with a man of their choosing. That’s not to say all third-wave feminists are single, but a lot of them seem to despise their partners (e.g. Jessica Valenti) or show signs (e.g. Laurie Penny, and the woman in the tweet above) of being such unpleasant characters that no sane man would want anything to do with them.

Which leaves us with an interesting question. Is their obnoxious personality a result of their failing to find a decent partner, or is their failing to find a decent partner a result of their obnoxious personality? My guess is it starts with the latter, then forms a vicious circle.

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Another Profile of a Modern American Woman

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This story appears in the New York Times:

I was 37, single, unemployed and depressed because in a couple of months I was going to be moving out of my studio apartment on East 23rd Street in Manhattan and in with my mother in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Since taking a buyout at my Wall Street firm, I had devoted myself to two activities: searching for a new job and working out. And I spent a lot of time in my apartment.

One day historians will come up with a term for the cohort of women who thought Sex and the City was a documentary providing lifestyle advice.

My 23rd Street building was near three colleges. When I signed the lease, I didn’t realize the place had so many student renters, people who understandably liked to party. Yet it was the least social time in my life. Most of my friends were married. I had no income, and rent was almost $3,000 a month. I wasn’t dating because I hadn’t figured out how to positively spin my unemployment story.

That’s why you weren’t dating? Uh-huh. Sure.

One afternoon in the elevator, I saw one of the guys from next door in jeans and a T-shirt, his dark hair slightly receding.

…

“How old are you guys?” I said. “Like, 23?”

“Yeah, well, I’m 23,” he said.

“I’m 37. So I hope you get a younger neighbor the next go-round.”

“I never would have guessed 37,” he said. “I thought you were, like, 26.”

Was he sweet-talking me? I looked the same age as my friends, but maybe the dormlike context had fooled him.

37-year old doesn’t know when a young shitlord is dishing out flattering comments about her age in order to see if she’d be up for a shag. Later, we’ll find out this woman worked in HR and has a Masters in Psychology.

Two weeks later, my friend Diana and I were sitting at a nearby bar, drinking vodka sodas and looking at her Tinder app, when my 23-year-old neighbor popped up.

“Swipe right!” I said. “Tell him you’re out with me.”

She swiped, they matched, and she told him I was with her. I followed up with a text, proud to be out on a Saturday night. Here was proof that I, too, was fun.

Growing old is compulsory. Growing old with dignity is very much optional.

We messaged back and forth; he was on his way home. When I asked if he wanted to join us back at my apartment, he said yes.

I bet he did.

Twenty minutes later Diana and I arrived, and he showed up with a bottle of vodka and cans of Diet Coke.

Some women get given flowers.

Soon he was laughing, saying, “My roommates can’t stand you. And I was always so confused why a 26-year-old was upset about our parties. I thought you were just an old soul.”

As if a 26-year old working in New York doesn’t need to get their head down at night.

Diana and I danced to “Jump” by the Pointer Sisters, a song he didn’t recognize. Before Diana left at 4 a.m., she whispered to me, “He likes you. Hook up.”

Ah, where would women be without the advice of their best friend?

I offered a hushed protest, insisting he was too young. But apparently the neighborly tension had been building, because he and I started kissing right after she left.

When we woke up, hung over, a few hours later, I begged him not to tell his roommates. My transformation from puritanical noise warden to Mrs. Robinson embarrassed me; my dulled brain screamed, “What just happened?”

But I won’t lie: It was also an ego boost. I may not have had a job, a husband or a boyfriend, but at least I could attract an adorable 23-year-old.

Doesn’t take much to boost the ego of a woman pushing forty in New York, does it? Flatter her by lying about her age, match with her mate on Tinder, then turn up at her door with a bottle of vodka. Frankly, most women who aren’t utterly hideous could attract a 23-year old, even an adorable one. What is more difficult is encouraging them to stick around afterwards.

Over the next few weeks, we texted constantly and kept getting together to talk about our dating and employment searches and to fool around. When I asked him if I seemed older, he said, “Not really. Mostly because you aren’t working and you’re around all of the time.”

Not only did she believe him, she recounted it in the New York Times.

I said: “When I graduated high school, you were 4.”

Okay, so…

With him, my usual romantic anxiety disappeared. Instead of projecting my insecurities onto him…

By, for instance, constantly bringing up the age gap?

…and wondering if I was enough, I just had fun because I knew our age gap made a future impossible. And I was moving out soon.

Not that my mind was entirely free of concerns. I worried people would think we were ridiculous. But when I told my coupled-up girlfriends, they said I was living a fantasy.

The first paragraph is rather inconsistent with the first. Was she really having fun, or pouring out her anxiety to everyone she met?

“At least you’re having fun,” a soon-to-be-divorced friend said. “None of us are. I didn’t even want to touch my husband at the end.”

Can we hear from the husband?

Even so, the chasm between my new friend and me was no more glaring than when he said, “Dating is fun. I get to meet lots of people.”

Here’s a tip, ladies: trawling through Tinder looking for a shag is a lot more fun for a 23-year old man than a 37-year old woman.

Dating, for me, was about as fun as my job search. And that was because I approached both in almost exactly the same way: with a strategy, spreadsheets and a lot of anxiety about presenting my best self and hiding my weaknesses.

Including a 277 bullet-point list of requirements every partner must satisfy.

Our honest exchange was so refreshing. Dates my age disguised their fears with arrogance. Within an hour of meeting me, one had boasted about the amount of sex he’d had, and another, on our second date, gave me a heads-up that his large size had caused many of his relationships to end. How considerate of him to warn me!

This is a useful illustration of the dating pool which 37-year old New York women can expect to swim around in. What, there’s no Mr Big in his limousine?

With appropriate romantic prospects, I had been overly polished and protective. Just like the men, I spun stories broadcasting fake confidence.

Those with genuine confidence got their lives in order a decade previously.

But I confided in my neighbor about how hard the year had been and how worried I was about finding a job and a man to love.

Can we check with Manhattan hospitals whether a 23-year old male was admitted over the past year having gnawed off his own arm and survived a three-storey jump from a window?

With nothing at stake, I was charmingly vulnerable.

Or, more accurately, desperate.

One evening as we cuddled in my apartment, with me droning on about my man troubles and career fears, he said, “We get so fixated on the job we want or the person we’re dating because we don’t think there will be another. But there’s always another.”

Sounds as though he had one lined up already.

I thought that was so true. Even wise. But it’s easier to have that attitude, about jobs or love, at 23 than at 37.

I suspect the reason you’re in this predicament at 37 is because you blithely assumed “there will always be another” when you were in your 20s. Wise? Hardly.

Then one night I came home a little too drunk…

Such larks! Only she’s 37 and miserably single. Any idea why?

…and encountered him in the hallway. He was the one who almost always decided when we would hang out, and I complained it wasn’t fair that everything seemed to be on his terms. I was pressuring him, reverting to my worst dating default behavior, and he fled into his apartment.

I’d love to hear the conversation that transpired with his mates after this.

The next day he texted: “maybe we should chill with this. you’ve been a good friend … we complicated it a little though haha.”

This is what’s known as being dumped. By text. How’s that ego holding up?

I knew “haha” was just his millennial way of keeping it light, but here’s the thing: In our “light” relationship, I had let myself be fully known, revealing all of my imperfections, in a way I normally didn’t. With him I was my true self, and it was a revelation.

Is that how you’re gonna spin it? Okay, but recall that the woman who shagged her way around Europe ended her article by saying how much she’d learned from each one-night stand and how it taught her she didn’t need a partner to be happy. I’m about as convinced this time around.

And a conundrum. Because I can’t seem to be my true self when I’m seriously looking for love, when all I’m thinking about is the future. To win the person (or the job, for that matter), we think we have to be the most perfect version of ourselves. When our hearts are on the line, vulnerability can feel impossible.

No wonder sonny-boy scarpered and locked himself in his flat if this is what he had to listen to after each sweaty, drink-fuelled romp. I expect he’s using the fire escape for general egress these days.

I followed up this article by doing some research on the author, and her career history is illuminating:

– English Degree

– Masters in Clinical Psychology

– 5 years in HR, holding onto a position for a maximum of 2 years and 5 months

– 4 years Vice President Equities COO, including “Led projects in business strategy, communications, morale building, hiring, placement, and training”

In short, she’s an HR power-skirt who hopped from one job to another and somehow ended up as a VP in Equities leading projects in business strategy at a major bank. One can imagine what the real bankers thought of her elevation to this post.

What’s amusing, at least to me, is that the car-crash of an article coupled with her career history ticks just about every stereotype I can think of. All that’s missing is a few more years and a bunch of cats.

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Workplace Romance

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Over what could loosely be described as my professional career I have encountered the following situations (European also includes Britain):

1. A lead engineer in a giant European company reporting directly to his long-term partner, who was in a very senior position.

2. An HR manager in a smallish European/American/Russian JV reporting directly to her husband, who was the company General Director. When an employee had a serious row with her over his terms and conditions, it was escalated to her husband for arbitration.

3. A lead engineer in a giant European company reporting directly to her husband, who was in a reasonably senior position.

4. A woman working in a giant European company who was tasked with managing a subcontractor on behalf of her husband, who was the actual contract holder. Any disputes between the subcontractor and her would be escalated to her husband to resolve.

5. A very senior site manager working overseas for a giant European company got his (local) secretary pregnant. He sent his family back home and moved his new mistress into his company-provided house. His boss couldn’t complain too much because he’d done much the same thing several years earlier.

6. A lead engineer working in a large European company embarked on a relationship with one of his trainee engineers, who was about 30 years his junior.

All of the above situations were not only allowed to continue, but some were even known at the outset. The excuse given was that the company had to find positions for both partners and this was difficult at the best of times. Others didn’t want to lose an experienced staff member, so turned a blind eye.

By contrast, I once met a man working for ExxonMobil who managed a team of translators and began a relationship with one of his direct reports. They declared the relationship in short order and they were told one of them would have to resign. The woman got a job elsewhere, they married, and had kids.

It is perhaps significant that all of these happened outside the country where the respective companies were based. Whether this is also permitted in their HQ I don’t know. What this taught me is that a lot of management is simply individuals doing whatever is most convenient to them at the time, principles and ethics be damned. The Americans seem to be a little more professional in this regard, and I don’t think it comes as a surprise that the sole exception came from ExxonMobil.

For my part, I was told early in my career never to “poke the payroll”. It was good advice.

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Has one done one’s due diligence?

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So Prince Harry intends to marry an actress from a television drama, eh? Somehow I get the impression that this is rather apt, because this has every chance of becoming a reality TV show in short order.

Here’s the piece of Meghan Markle’s biography I find most interesting:

Markle was in a relationship with actor and producer Trevor Engelson from 2004 until 2011. They married on September 10, 2011, and divorced in August 2013.

So we can assume that Markle has a good working relationship with a divorce lawyer she keeps on speed-dial. Being an American celebrity, this is hardly surprising. Looking at those dates, she was in a seven-year relationship before she got married aged 30, and threw in the towel two years later. This is not a good sign, although to be fair with a background like that she’s joining the right family.

I really hope that Harry has done his due-diligence here. At the very least, he ought to have gone for a quiet beer with this Engelson chap and got the straight skinny from him. The last thing he wants to do is listen to Meghan’s version of how the relationship broke down. In my experience, divorced women talk about their ex-husbands as if they were sacrificing children on the living room floor every night. The men are equally bitter, but their anger is normally directed towards the divorce proceedings and her behaviour during this period rather than her conduct during the marriage itself.

I met a woman once who claimed over and over that her marriage failed solely because her husband was a lying alcoholic who mistreated her. But the more I learned, the more I got the impression a portion of the blame lay with her. When I put this to her she went mental, and shouted at me for suggesting she “deserved” her ill-treatment. The idea that she ought take some responsibility for her predicament was met with apoplectic anger.

Later, just out of curiosity, I dropped the ex-husband an email. He was surprisingly receptive and gave me a brief overview of their marriage. He said there was blame on both sides, and admitted fault on his own part. Without any prompting he then described his ex-wife’s behaviour which by then was all-too familiar to me. In fact, he had her down to a T. He said she’d started slandering his name about town as soon as the divorce was initiated, and he was disappointed to hear that she was still doing it. For his part, he said he’d moved on, made peace with himself, and put the whole episode behind him.

Now he could have been bullshitting. But if you have a guy saying there was blame on  both sides and admitting to fault on his part, and saying it’s water under the bridge and he’s moved on; and a woman saying it was 100% his fault and continuing, years later, to portray him as a monster and flying into a rage at the mere suggestion she takes at least some responsibility, who do you believe?

Yeah, me too. If Harry or one of his mates hasn’t sat down with this Engelson fellow and got his view on why and how the marriage fell apart, I fear Meghan’s plan to quit being a star in a TV drama may remain unrealised.

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But he doesn’t look the type!

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After reading my post about Lindsay Shepherd, my research assistant (the small one) said something to the effect of:

“Those guys look like complete weirdos! The one on the left looks like the sort of person who appears in your posts on polyamory!”

She is referring to Nathan Rambukkana, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University:

Let’s take a look at his biography:

My book, Fraught Intimacies: Non/Monogamy in the Public Sphere (UBC Press, 2015) explores the increased mediation of non-monogamies since the early nineties—in every medium from television, to film, to self-help books, to the Internet—and how such convergent mediation opens these discourses up to societal scrutiny, as well as transformation. By exploring the privileged logics that frame our conceptions of intimacy, I explore the political and cultural implications of how we frame non-monogamy broadly in sexual discourse, as well as how the public sphere presences of three major forms of non-monogamy (adultery, polygamy and polyamory) display a complex relationship with “intimate privilege,” an emergent state in which one’s intimacies are read as viable, ethical or even real.

Now there’s a surprise, eh? If the media wants us to buy the line that polyamory is now mainstream, we’re going to have to overlook the fact that most people involved with it are complete weirdos and many of them have serious issues which urgently need addressing.

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