Group therapy in a blog.
Esther Kustanowitz
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Posts by Esther Kustanowitz
Could You Be a “Retrosexual”?
215 years
Let’s look at your symptoms.
1) You’ve become the consummate Googler, especially of your exes.
2) You’re a virtuoso Facebook stalker, especially of your exes.
3) You poke, IM or write email messages to your exes, trying to recapture the magic of yesteryear.
4) You’ve ever said, “all I want is to see her/him again.”
While all of us have probably Googled an ex from time to time, a few people are taking it to the next level, and trying to reunite with/resurrect lost loves via Facebook and other social media. If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions, the Boston Phoenix (quoted in Time Magazine) thinks you’re a retrosexual: a creature born of the Facebook era, in which time passed does not end a relationship/obsession…
“You’re curious to see what she looks like, and it’s easy to fantasize about alternative courses your life might have taken.” It’s the same feeling that compels people to attend high school reunions.
Gentle reader, not all of us feel compelled to attend high school reunions. But I digress.
The piece shares stories of people who re-met after many years, to tepid – or incredibly awkward – results. But there’s always someone with the silver lining of a story that makes you think – hey, this just might work for me too…
[…]what about Elise Garber and her first kiss, Harlan Robins? For them, life really did resemble a romantic comedy. Robins remembered his summer-camp girlfriend and replied to her Facebook message. They agreed to meet for drinks the next time he was in Chicago. When they saw each other, something clicked. They talked into the night, went out the next day, then decided to give their long-distance retrosexual romance a try. Surprisingly, it worked. Garber quit her advertising job and moved to Seattle to be with him. On Sept. 6, they married. “And to think,” says Garber, “I worried that we’d spend the whole evening talking about summer camp.”
So there you have it. Retrosexuality leads to happiness. Just like JDate…it works for other people. Since all my exes are married, I’m looking forward to the next article: about how retrosexual homewrecking is the wave of the romantic future.
Dateline: Beverly Hills – Bachelor #87
815 years
The world is full of dating stories. This is one of them.
Written by a friend of mine (no, really, it’s not me) who recently moved to LA from New York (I swear it’s not me!), the post tells a tale all-too-familiar to Jewish daters…there’s a fancy hotel, expensive cars and clothes, and a man with an obscure job. And of course, awkward conversation.
Dateline: Beverly Hills – Bachelor #87
by J., intrepid JDater
I was contacted on JDate by a man who initiated an IM conversation with “Are you a good cook”? I continued to chat with him online and then over the phone, at which point he asked me out for a date. Bachelor #87 hails from Israel. He is from Iran originally and moved to LA from Israel when he was 18. So a Persian/Israeli Jew. He’s 43, never been married and “works in real estate” what ever that means. He does not work for a company and does not have his own company so somehow he’s figured out how to make money. (Fine Italian shoes, fancy sports car and diamond watch attached). I’m starting to think I’m the idiot here, who works in a cubicle all day.
Two to Make You Laugh
115 years
We don’t like to dwell on the negative here at JDA. Life is so serious and this field full of such gravitas that we like to make you smile, even laugh, as you journey with us through the valley of the shadow of dating (OK, so maybe that metaphor was slightly negative. But still, read on…).
And so I’m pleased to present these two things that may make you smile, chuckle, guffaw, or forward/retweet to a friend.
“You Make Me Touch Your Hands for Stupid Reasons”
From the creatives over at “You’re the Man Now, Dog” – conveniently abbreviated YTMND – comes this dramatic reading of an actual breakup letter. I suspect it’s a breakup email, but potato, potahto. I’d tell you to watch for my favorite part, but let’s face it – it’s pretty much all my favorite part.
“I’m typing this on Shabbat, but I pray from the Koren Sacks Orthodox Siddur”
Over at Jewcy.com, Patrick Aleph, a self-described “rocker dude” notes that now that he’s single and has decided he wants to marry Jewish, he’s having some trouble finding his ideal woman. In “Rocker Dude Seeks Bitchin’ Beshert,” he opines:Â “there are plenty of Gefilte-Fish-In-The-Sea, but I’m getting picky. I’ve boiled my soulmate to a very specific, bordering on psychotic, JDate Nazi-esque list of characteristics.” On the list for his beshert (soulmate):
Education: bachelors degree in something super practical from a pussy liberal state college
Boobs: proportional and large enough to give me hands full of fun
There’s more – check it out for yourselves. And while you’re at it, check out “Hacking JDate,” for his attempts at that very interesting and challenging activity.
Got stories or links that make you laugh? Share them with us in the comments, or email me at jdatersanonymous at gmail.com.
Cultural Differences
315 years
Cultural differences can be the spice of life – making things diverse always makes things more interesting. But extreme cultural differences can create conflict and lead to more misunderstandings than an episode of “Three’s Company.” Usually people speak about cultural differences as originating from language differences. But what a recent article in the Seattle P.I. blog pointed out is that sometimes, even two people who speak English may not be speaking the same language, or use the same tone.
The writer insightfully noticed that although American and British newspapers both offer personals that are technically written in English, the tone and length of the American personals are vastly different than in their British counterparts.
Both of these ads are from the Review of Books. The first is from the New York Review of Books, while the second is from the London Review of Books.
NYRB: THE REAL DEAL–classy, confident, and really cute Ph.D. Sensual and stylish, sweet and successful, Boston-based. Brains, looks, and a great sense of fun. Toned, fit, romantic, blonde. Proactive, easygoing, generous, yet no tolerance for injustice or arrogance. Traveler, writer, adventurer–can never get enough of Paris, San Miguel, Puerto Escondido (dreams of one day speaking Spanish fluently), fantasizes about visiting Rome or exploring Outer Banks with special man. Fan of political humor, legislative policy, jazz clubs, Prosecco, fiction, New York weekends, Central Park, fireworks on the Esplanade. Appreciative of talent, be it sports, theater, music. Seeks bright, passionate, active man, 50–early 70s.
LRB: Inelegant. Seeks same. Be my soul/slob-mate. F (42) seeks M (35-55) or best excuse for one.
What kinds of cultural or communicational issues have you experienced in your relationships (or attempted relationships)?
Who’s Crazy?: Lessons in Love and Communication
515 years
My old “nondating” bloggerfriend Ken Wheaton (who’s got a novel coming out, btw), posted this to Facebook, noting that women are crazy and that he had no idea if this was true or a stunt. So I clicked play hesitantly, prepared to defend the honor of this particular woman and all women everywhere, noting that we are not crazy, or that the whole thing sounded made up to me.
And so it began:
During the Summer of 2007, I had the opportunity to backpack around Europe for 2 weeks. I talked about it often before I left. My girlfriend however, although great in many respects, was not the world’s greatest listener. I left on Friday June 1st. Despite even calling her to say goodbye the night before, she never realized I left. When I arrived home 2 weeks later, I had several emails from her, waiting in my inbox…
On his site, JD notes (about all his content), “All of this is true, or none of it is — whatever you want.”
After viewing it, I’m not sure what to think. Is her descent into relationship madness funny/relatable/pathetic? Yes. Are some of her reactions over the top? Of course. Should she have listened when her boyfriend told her he’d be out of town for two weeks? Given. But do we know that said boyfriend is an excellent communicator? Nope, we don’t. And what kind of human being doesn’t check email even once for two whole weeks? I know most people feel we’re too connected these days, but two weeks without phone or email, even to Mom? I don’t know.
Maybe it’s like the statistic quoted in a number of (pre-2001) films, including “Sleepless in Seattle,” which noted that women over 40 were more likely to be killed in a terrorist attack than they were to get married – fictional, but that it doesn’t matter if the story is actually true, as Rosie O’Donnell’s character says in “Sleepless”: it feels true. (But don’t worry: the “doomed spinsters” are getting married, says Newsweek.)
So: crazy? Or not crazy? True? Or just “feels true”? I don’t have answers. But what I do have (without spoiling the ending of the clip) is some idea that when they’re in relationships, people need to communicate more clearly in advance of an absence, and yes – I’ll go out there and say it – even when they’re not absent. Now, watch the clip. Laugh. Think it insane or untrue, or crazy or accurate, but enjoy the outstanding musical accompaniment and the dramatic escalation. (And for more of JD’s stories, check out jdsmanstories.blogspot.com.)
Holy Shidduch! The New “FML”?
115 years
Those of you who have never heard the f-word might want to skip this post.
Some of you may be familiar with a site called “F___ My Life,” in which people write in complaints about all the ways their life sucks, and then end each post with the signoff, “F___ My Life,” or simply, “FML.” The subheader reads: “your everyday life stories.” The tagline: “Get the guts to spill the beans.”
Now we have Holy Shidduch! – I don’t exactly want to call it a “ripoff,” although the site’s design and concept do seem rather similar to the original FML site, so let’s go with the kinder “homage” – which centers such “my life is so nuts” – FML-style stories within the religious dating world, and ends each post with “HS.” The subheader reads: “your everyday dating stories.” And the (somewhat less catchy) tagline at HS is (emphasis, including caps and color directly from that site): WELCOME TO ALL THOSE WHO WISH THE MATCHMAKER WOULD STOP CALLING!
OK. We get it.
I know people who are obsessed with FML, and there are undoubtedly those who will become addicted to these short tales from the Jewish dating battlefield. As someone who’s never been a fan of FML, I can’t say I am going to add HS to my list of daily must-reads – most of these stories, on both sites, do seem more “everyday” than uniquely appalling. I’ve heard far worse stories, and the boxiness of the design – while perhaps an homage to the current Twitter trend, seems a little unsophisticated to me. But I’m one of the first people to admit that a site doesn’t have to be gorgeous or a runaway success in order to tap into the pop culture zeitgeist.
As readers and consumers of dating-related culture and sites, do you have any insight, comments or insights? Are these stories compelling enough to keep you coming back? Or is it just a massive complaining competition (“you think that’s bad, my life is worse…”)?
How to Celebrate Tu B’Av: The Ten Suggestions
015 years
Arriving imminently, the Jewish holiday of love.
To celebrate, you can:
1) Watch Benji Lovitt try to get a date for the holiday
2) Go to a local Jewish singles party celebration of the holiday, like tomorrow night’s LoveFest 2009 sponsored by JConnectLA or Bangitout’s NY White Party (now to be held on Thursday because of a rain threat).
3) Find. Me. Somebody to Loooove.
4) Remember that last year, Madonna and Guy Ritchie used Tu B’Av as a chance to rejustify their love.
5) Read about how I once jinxed the Bangitout Tu B’Av party.
6) Reassess the pros and cons of speed dating, created by Rabbi Yaacov Deyo in 1998.
7) Listen to Galgalatz, Israeli radio, for a menu of songs including “All You Need is Love” (The Beatles), “I’m Yours” (Jason Mraz) and – of course – Lady Gaga’s “Love Game,” with the immortal love lyric “I want to take a ride on your disco stick.”
8) Go through your iPhone/BlackBerry address book and let your eyes linger on each name, remembering how you were treated and how you treated others, and promise yourself it’s going to be different this time. If you’re feeling benevolent and find worthy candidates, recycle people by matching them with each other based on things they have in common. If you’re not feeling benevolent, don’t bother…
9) Go old school: Wear white and frolic in the fields, waiting for a special someone to come along and fall in love with you. Make sure it’s your field, though. Because otherwise it’s just called trespassing. And bring some Shout wipes. Because grass stains like a bitch.
10) YOUR IDEAS HERE.
Happy Tu B’Av, everyone. And please, as always, love responsibly.
JDA Roundup: This Week in Dating and Relationships
015 years
Greetings sports fans. Here’s your vital roundup of dating- and relationship-related stories, and yes, even a little humor thrown in at the end.
The Husband, His Wife, and His Other Wife (Her Sister): If you think there’s tough competition in the dating world, at least you’re not married to the same guy your sister is. Brad Greenberg, formerly of the Jewish Journal and the award-winning God Blog, now writes at GetReligion.org about such a situation. And no, he’s not the husband in question. But his shock comes not from the prospect of a polygamous relationship featuring two sisters, but at the job the Telegraph reporter did in reporting the story:
While the Telegraph delivered a surprising story here, the reporter for this un-bylined article does a poor job of including the religious context needed for this story. In fact, we’re never even told in this story that the Mormon Church has banned polygamy, only that it is banned in the United States and, apparently, that “Fundamentalist Mormon families†favor polygamy.
She Brought Lewinsky Back (Yeah!): Over at Jewcy, Shula Reinharz gets the credit for bringing everyone’s favorite former White House intern back (a full week before former President Clinton flew over to N. Korea to get two American journalists freed), as the symbol for Jewish women who may have been raised in an overly sexually aggressive manner. In “Sex and the Suburbs,” Prof. Reinharz says that when the Clinton-Lewinsky story broke, she had been focusing on the wrong story.
Everyone was rightly talking about Bill. What he did wrong – and wrong he surely did. But what about Monica? Had she been doing this kind of thing back in Beverly Hills or was this an entirely new extracurricular activity for her? Can we generalize to Jewish girls in Weston or Westfield or Westwood from what Monica was doing in the West Wing?
The piece continues to consider whether today’s young people consider sex to mean only in the non-Clintonian definition, in the process noting that the practice of oral sex “is so rampant that the Reform Jewish movement has taken it on as a national policy concern.”
I checked that piece of information out on Google, and sure enough there is an article to that effect dated November 19, 2005. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, addressed 4,200 people in Houston for its biennial convention and explicitly talked about oral sex and hooking up. Bravo, Rabbi Yoffie. For him the issue was that girls are “defining their worth by how they please boys.” The degradation of girls flies in the face of the Reform Movement’s dedication to the equality of women, he said.
Can’t Touch This: And now, from oral sex, we go to the concept of shomer negiah, meaning the abstention from all premarital physical contact with the opposite sex. If you’re shomer negiah and have been looking for a loophole, we’ve got one for you. (Hat tip to Miriam Shaviv at the JC.com.)
And lastly, since this is “J”Daters Anonymous, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring out the J factor by mentioning the imminent arrival of Tu B’Av, the Jewish holiday of love (often called the “Jewish Valentine’s Day”). So look for a post about that auspicious day soon.
JDA: Now Accepting Guest Submissions
415 years
JDaters Anonymous is now accepting guest submissions on dating-related topics.
Ideally, pieces should be no longer than 400 words and address one of the subjects that we talk about here: Jewish dating, regular dating, online dating, blind dating, “the singles crisis,” relationships, how Jewish life and values relate to and impact the dating process, etc.
There is no payment for posts, but you retain all rights to your work.
Publication is at sole discretion of the editorial management. Editorial management retains the rights to lightly edit your work before publication. Press releases or blatant advertisements for other products, books, etc will likely not be published, so if you’re promoting something, do it within the context of something substantive, or better yet, keep it for the bio line at the end of the piece.
You can submit your pieces to jdatersanonymous at gmail.com. Looking forward to your submissions!
How to Overcome Sterility and Long-Term Bachelorhood (Without Really Trying)
515 years
The “How to Solve the Singles Crisis” discussion takes a new turn with the following advice: Have at least 12 children, do not use birth control, and continue having children after 40. According to Ynet, “This is the formula for overcoming sterility and long-term bachelorhood in the Religious Zionism movement put forth by renowned Rabbi David Batzri.”
Rabbi Batzri, a respected kabbalist and head of Nahar Shalom Yeshiva, participated in a prayer assembly held in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and at the Western Wall together with about one thousand single women searching for “respectable mating.” Under the title “Women in Wait,” they heard tips for getting themselves out of their distressful situation.
[T]he rabbi asserted that “a girl who wishes to marry must take upon herself already on the first date an obligation to have no less than 12 children.” In addition, he encouraged women to put pressure on one another not to delay pregnancy after getting married and not to wait long in between births.
Maybe I’m not seeing what is obvious to others reading this. But for me, a single woman who is, let’s say, NOT in her early 20s, I can’t see the value of this advice to unmarried women. Is the implication that the reason these women aren’t married is because they go into their dates unwilling to have more than 12 children? Because otherwise, you’re just telling them to do something that’s outside of their control: they can’t get married because they haven’t “taken on the obligation to have no less than 12 children,” and they certainly can’t have children before they’ve gotten married.
This reminds me of Lori Gottlieb’s article titled “Marry Him,” in which she opined (this is my paraphrase – I suggest you read the whole article) that women in their 20s should settle for Mr. Good-Enough so they can have the life they want in their 30s. By the time they reach their 30s, they’re living another situation entirely:
Choosing to spend your life with a guy who doesn’t delight in the small things in life might be considered settling at 30, but not at 35. By 40, if you get a cold shiver down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s, is that settling or making an adult compromise?
Basically, go back and be in your 20s and make different decisions. If you’re already in your 30s, it’s like the bumper sticker: “If you can read this, you’re too close.”
Batzri’s instruction to women isn’t a solution to sterility, or to “long-term bachelorhood.” Unmarried women aren’t sterile, nor are they responsible for bachelors being bachelors. Perhaps giving a bit of mussar (strongly worded advice) to the bachelors might yield more marriages – and therefore more children – than telling a crowd of women, gathering because they’re desperately desiring of marriage and children, that it’s up to them to change things.