Hitched/Ditched

The Age Thing, Again

7
15 years
by in Friends With Benefits, Funny/Sad or Sad/Funny, Hitched/Ditched, Online Dating, The Friend Zone, The Single Life

My friends and I often find ourselves talking about “the age thing” – this can include men’s propensity to seek out younger women (often excluding women in their own age group), how older women dating younger men are generally frowned on and assigned an animal nickname (welcome to “Cougartown”), how an age difference can either matter or not matter in choosing someone to date, and the degree to which online dating – filtering primarily by age – creates unnecessary and unimportant hurdles in front of someone who could be great.

For instance, this “Vows” couple who almost didn’t make it, because of her list, and because of “the age thing.” They went out twice, had two great dates, and then she called it off – not because she didn’t like him or have fun with him, but because he was nine years older. True, part of that was because she was feeling her youth and her newness in a big city with lots of (perceived potential) – at that point, to her, 26/35 was a huge difference.

Don’t cry for him, though – he became a “serial dater” in the ultimate serial dater city, and along the way, stayed in touch with the lady in question, meeting for drinks and listening to her kvetch about other guys. Eventually, the stars aligned, something shifted, the bride-to-be got older and wiser, and the couple dated, got engaged and got married.

The bride said she could not believe she wasted more than 10 years without him.  “I look at him now and he’s the hottest guy on the planet,” she said.

What lesson should we learn from this couple?

That the right guy at the wrong time is the wrong guy?

That attraction sometimes takes 10 years to develop? (For women – if he hadn’t been attracted from the beginning, I don’t think we’d be reading this story…)

That we shouldn’t cling so tightly to our “lists”?

That age ain’t nothin’ but a number? Or that age unfairly assigns a set of stereotypes to a person who may not remotely fit them?

How to Celebrate Tu B’Av: The Ten Suggestions

0
15 years
by in Funny/Sad or Sad/Funny, Hitched/Ditched, How to Solve the Singles Crisis, Jewish, Online Dating, Relationships, The Single Life

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.

How to Succeed? Be a SSotM!

0
16 years
by in Hitched/Ditched, Online Dating, Single Semite of the Month

“Jewish Indiana Jones” Josh Bernstein’s been gaining visibility lately, with a loyal female fan base and this gushing piece in New York Magazine (see CK’s post at Jewlicious). Meanwhile, over in professional dating industry professional land, author and relationships coach Evan Marc Katz recently got engaged.

What’s the connection? Clearly Single Semites of the Month, once identified by JDatersAnonymous, are destined for eventual stardom. Josh Bernstein initiated the category in February 2006, and then went on to be featured in the NY Times before getting to NY Magazine recently. As for Evan, the author of two books on dating now, was a Single Semite of the Month back in April 2007, and recently announced his engagement.

So…not a guarantee, but there’s a high incidence of good things happening for SSotMs. Have one to recommend? See the guidelines here.

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