JDaters Anonymous

Last week, mid-heatwave, I saw a couple–visibly sweating into their clothing, causing darkening patches to puddle on their backs, chests and under their arms–who insisted on not just holding hands, but occasionally walking with his arm around her shoulder…you know, the
kind of people who never want to be apart, even if it’s 100 degrees out.

“You’ve found that special someone, and you never want to be apart…” I know that SNL’s “Love Toilet” was a fake product. Really. But I really have a feeling that this new trend of “Couple-Surfing” is an outgrowth of that kind of disgustingly-crazy-in-love couple, for whom PDA still means “public displays of affection.”

While I’m all for couples communicating–whatever method they decide to use–I feel like this trend introduces a third party and may not facilitate communication; in some cases, the intervening layer of technology may lead to misunderstandings…

In any case, thank Wired’s blog for this list of the interesting things couples said about how they view the internet, including:”An infomaniac is better off with another infomaniac who understands and partakes of their addiction, rather than mixing the tender electrovert
with a more organically-centered human,” and “There is something poetic in an e-mail correspondence, even if you see the other person every day. The e-mail personalities can be somehow different.”

I’ve long mourned the loss of the love letter tradition–will our emails of LOL and ROTFLs someday serve the same romantic and nostalgic function as the lovingly inscribed, handwritten declarations of feelings immortalized by couples separated by life and war and parental or social impediments? Perhaps this trend of couples communicating with each other online might serve as a romance renaissance of sorts?

One thing’s certain…if the article/list reveals any essential truth, it is this statement:

“I think my lover would prefer it if I wasn’t checking blogs at 2 in the morning in my underwear.”

Yeah, we’re pretty sure you’re right about that.

(Here’s my latest singles column…I wrote this column before finding out about last week’s Upper West Side tragedy, so any thematic similarity between Hamlet’s ponderings and those of someone who’s clinically depressed are strictly coincidental, and not intended as a commentary on the tragedy; still, I felt I had to address it in some way (and that’s what paragraphs 4 & 5 are about. I hope that the community comforts Sarah’s family and provides support for them and for all singles and marrieds in the future. EDK)

Coping with the Question
by Esther D. Kustanowitz
(First Person Singular, NY Jewish Week, August 4, 2006)

“To be, or not to be, that is the question,” Hamlet pondered, torturing himself with an existential query. As singles, we too grapple with an essential question: “Why are you still single?”

Pose the question, even theoretically, and hordes will respond: you’re too picky, fat, short, ugly or boring; you’re not putting yourself out there; you have issues; you’re spiritually or morally bankrupt; you fear intimacy and commitment; you’re waiting for impossible perfection; or you’re so “whiny,” you should “just freakin’ wed anyone already.” (That last one? Courtesy of an anonymous blogger, complaining about my June column.)

While self-examination is already a single person’s occupational hazard, asking such a question repeatedly takes an emotional toll. When we’re alone, the question echoes, engendering a burgeoning paranoia that the purgatory may well be eternal, and because of some unrevealed and essentially unforgivable hubris. Men blame women, women blame men, everyone blames their parents and their community, and themselves.

I had already completed this column when I got the news that a 25-year-old Upper West Sider, known by most as a happy young woman, had ended her life. Over the last week or so, there has been much discussion of who or what to blame for her death: named suspects include the community pressure to marry, a recent breakup, and clinical depression.

And although the community is not necessarily — as others have intimated — responsible for clinical depression, it may well have been one of many factors creating stress and hopelessness in the young woman’s life. I can only hope that the community will respond appropriately — helping her family to mourn and find comfort, and creating programs to better ensure that people of all ages feel supported and valued, socially, religiously and emotionally.

But the question “Why are you still single?” or alternately, “Why aren’t you married yet?” is yet another form of community pressure and expressed expectations. When a single responds with “I guess I just haven’t found the right person yet,” the yenta-in-residence leans in, sometimes touching your arm, shoulder or leg to indicate just how sympathetic they are, and “consoles” you: “Don’t worry, we’ll find you someone. God willing, it should be soon too by you. Maybe you should try meeting some new people?” Oh. Like we hadn’t thought of that before.

When it comes to the question, everyone — especially those who aren’t single — thinks he or she has the answer. Those Rules ladies thought they knew (“never accept a Saturday night date if he calls Thursday”). Those people who told us that our potentials were “just not that into us” thought they knew, too. Shmuley Boteach thinks he knows; in a Beliefnet.com article from June, Boteach told one mother that the reason her 29-year-old daughter was (oh, the horror!) still single was because she had friends. Ask her to sever ties with her friends for a few weeks, Boteach advised — after experiencing true loneliness, she’d be ready to accept a partner into her life.

Evan Marc Katz, E-Cyrano.com’s “online dating guru,” who I interviewed in one of my first columns, employs an irreverent, humorous approach to the infernal, eternal question in his new book, “Why You’re Still Single: What Your Friends Would Tell You If You Promised Not to Get Mad.” Katz and his co-author, Linda Holmes, present perspectives rather than answers, and the resultant honesty is refreshing. Against a backdrop of pop culture and humor, the duo delves into the depths of dating do’s and don’t’s, acting as the friends you really need — the funny ones who aren’t afraid to hurt your feelings if it will mean helping you out.

Struggling with one major question or many smaller ones, we understand that friends cannot take the place of our bashert. But neither should the pursuit of a significant other take the place of our already-significant friendships, the ones that provide love and support in a dating environment that — as we suffer the slings and arrows of our outrageous fortunes — can often feel like a friendless void.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is defined by his solitude; the Melancholy Dane cannot trust the people who surround him, not even his family. Most of us are luckier than Hamlet. Perhaps if he’d kept company with friends other than Ophelia, or if he’d experienced the proper support from his community, his existential dilemmas might have seemed a little less weighty.

Esther D. Kustanowitz took too many Shakespeare classes in college. You can reach her at jdatersanonymous@gmail.com.

As a freelancer, I do a lot of business with different clients. Usually we contract for a certain rate (only in rare cases does that actually involve a real contract), I do the work and they (eventually) pay. Ideal would be immediate payment on delivery of the product, which is submitted by a certain deadline adhered to by both parties. But realistically, there’s often a delay on the return. And sometimes, an initial client meeting clarifies that there’s no chemistry between us and we go our separate ways. That’s business.

With that as preamble, allow me to introduce the following situation (already well-covered in the blogosphere during my Middle East assignment, most notably here, in a post cited by the ever topical Steve Silver). A man and a woman meet on JDate (or any other online site). They trade an email or two, talk once or twice and decide to go out. They go to an expensive dinner (his choice); when the bill comes she offers to pay half, and he tells her he’ll take care of it. They both go to their respective homes; when he calls her a few days later, she doesn’t call him back. And that’s where it all goes to hell.

He gets it in his head that she owes him her half of the dinner bill and that he aims to collect it. He sends her emails and leaves her a series of voice mail messages to that effect, first appealing to her to “do the right thing”–since dating is equal to business in his world, her agreeing to accept his offer of dinner payment was her unspoken acceptance that there would be a future date–and ultimately threatening legal action against her at her place of business.

The guy has a strong confident voice, and conveys that he’s used to doing business. Even while threatening, he seems socially able, if annoying–as if he’s reporting on traffic conditions or conveying information about an apartment she might be interested in, telling her that “the ball’s totally in her court” and that she should “do the right thing.” Soon the voice mails and emails are all over the internet, including his name and hers, and being discussed all over the blogosphere.

But it’s fifty bucks. Let me repeat that. Fifty bucks. While fifty bucks is nothing that’s ever been spent on me for a first date, and perhaps it shouldn’t be, it’s still not a major amount of money for anyone with an actual job. For him, I doubt it’s about the money. It’s a control issue; it’s a rejection issue; and it’s the principle of the thing–he wanted to go out with her, and she didn’t, therefore he feels that she owes him. But that doesn’t mean she owes him money, whether it’s fifty or two hundred and fifty bucks.

But this situation raises questions about what’s right from a point of etiquette, from a point of technical legality, and from a point of menschlikhkeit (behaving like a mensch). There’s no way to know if “let’s split it” means “let’s split it,” or “let’s never do this again.” I understand the pain of not being called back. And, although not proudly, I will admit to not having called guys back even if I said I would; when a guy asks if he can call again, it’s harder to say “I don’t think so” than it is to say “sure.”

Is agreeing to go on a date a business transaction? If so, is there any standard contract, terms to which both parties have implicitly agreed even though no one signed anything? How does one dissolve a partnership that was never started? And what are our obligations to the men and women we date?

Already find yourself dating Klingons or Vulcans or singles who seem like they’re from space, the final frontier? Skip the formalities and sign up for TrekPassions, the online dating site for science fiction fans.

And yes, they’ve already added a “Browncoat” Group. If you don’t know what that is, this probably isn’t the site for you.

According to the report in the CBS news site:

Trek Passions received a boost back in March, when, on his late-night talk show, Conan O’Brien quipped: “The fans say the dating website is going great and any month now they hope a girl will join.” It’s not quite as bad as that. Although Passions Network President Michael Carter says they don’t track such things, an informal count suggests more than a quarter of the 2,550 users are women. […]

In many ways the site attracts about what you’d expect. One person interviewed for this story left the endearingly rambling voice mail of a man not entirely comfortable with women. And some profiles seem to be written in another language: “A TOS-TNG-DS9 Fan Looking For par’Machi.”

As someone who just told a story on Shabbat afternoon about how Return of the Jedi helped me get an SAT question right, I’m so glad I didn’t understand that.