Every guy with an online dating profile thinks he’s this guy.
The men with the best profiles are 5’8 or shorter.
It’s not okay to give that guy you lived with in college or the guy you kinda had a crush on in high school 4 stars or to “like” him. Just pretend you never saw him. You’re not doing yourself any favours. If you want to see him, send him an email.
Every guy is a laid back kind of guy who likes to cook and travel and wants a true partner in crime.
If he says he’s 5’9, he’s really 5’7. If he says he’s 6’2, he’s really 6’4.
The last time anyone read “The Great Gatsby” was when they were 14. It is also everyone’s favorite book. Listing it as a favorite is a waste of characters.
Every guy has been either Indiana Jones or Maverick at least once for (and possibly every) Halloween.
Your match percentage is entirely based on sex-play preferences and religious views. You are as likely to be incompatible socially with someone who is a 90% match as someone who is a 90% enemy.
Online dating and bar pick-ups — equal probability of meeting a serial killer.
No one is really comfortable with being on a dating site. A ridiculous truth because no one should be comfortable meeting drunk strangers at a bar. Your odds of meeting a serial killer or an organ harvester at either venue is entirely equal.
It’s a bad idea to lead with a selfie.
Speaking of profile photos… The ideal photo selection includes: one full body, one smiling, one of you doing an activity you really enjoy. Limit yourself. No one needs to see your instagram feed.
Brevity is the source of wit. Long-winded folks that feel the need to list every book they’ve ever read, or every movie they really, really love have more than a few reasons why they’re single.
There are some great people out there and online. If online dating hasn’t worked out yet, that’s okay. It may not. But if you’re not having fun while you’re doing it, then you’ve only got you to blame.
The French, apparently, go from kiss to couple faster than a La Mans race car.
“You Americans and your rules of dating!” He said teasingly, before kissing me.
Our conversation of cultural comparisons had revealed that the French don’t date and they don’t play games. They go from zero to first kiss to bonafide couple in 60 seconds flat. Perhaps this is not surprising for a nation home to La Mans and “la langue de l’amour.”
“As far as rules go when it comes to love, I only have one…” I replied.
I’ll come back to that later.
A few days earlier, I dropped into my favorite department store to cash-in on (or drop cash on?) its annual spring make-up event. Double points. Free gift tote with samples. What do you mean I don’t need another red lipstick? Of course I do! Natasha, the facial-care brand representative who had introduced me to the benefits of toner and weekly exfoliation, was more keen to catch-up on life than sell me eye cream. I was happy for the free make-up application and girl chat.
Under the influence of pink ginger ale, I divulged that I had stumbled out of a relationship and immediately into a new fling with a foreign suitor. Her eyes opened wide and she put down her lipstick pencil.
“Just remember, you have a lot of things going for you. Above all you have the advantage of youth — after you turn 30, men will lose interest.”
Pause.
Context: Natasha is hot and exotic. She has a boyfriend who treats her like a queen. She refuses to get married. She is in her 50s and looks 25. Seriously. She is the best advertisement for $500 face cream in the world.
Resume.
The only games I’m interested in playing are ones like Monopoly
“There are lots of rules out there to playing the game, but there are only a few that matter. Here they are:
1. Make him wait a month before you sleep with him. That’s just long enough to become friends so the sex is better. Any longer and he’ll go looking for it elsewhere.
2. Never let a man walk all over you. Be confident in who you are. A man should enhance your life. Not make it.
and 3. Don’t settle for anyone that doesn’t spoil you rotten. You’re wonderful. You’re a princess and deserve to be treated that way. A man that doesn’t pay at dinner will cheat you in other ways. And watch out for French men. They’re fantastic in bed, but they usually have a mistress. I work for the French. I’ve seen it all.”
Natasha’s words of wisdom blew my mind. And not because she had basically told me my prime only lasted two years. No, mostly because other than #1, her rules sounded less like rules and rather mottoes to date by.
We all acknowledge that dating is a game — this is an unfortunate reality that bothers the hell out of me. The only games I like are Monopoly and Scrabble (which I’m terrible at, but play with competitive enthusiasm/optimism). But I think we misuse the word ‘rules’ when we talk about dating. I prefer to think of these things — things like deciding when a couple takes certain steps — as guidelines, suggestions, a roadmap in finding what will make us happiest in the long run. It’s easy to find someone to go to bed with. Less easy to find someone that will make our whole lives better.
My one rule in dating is simple: Follow my instincts. Not just when it feels right, but also when it feels wrong.
Before I sign off, Natasha gave me one more morsel of wisdom and it’s the insight I might just love the most:
“A good relationship is like a good pair of shoes. A good pair of shoes don’t need breaking in. They fit you right and feel comfortable from the first step. That’s what you’re looking for. You don’t need life blisters.”
A good relationship shouldn’t remind you of this Marilyn Minter painting… #artnerd
About a month ago, my closest male friend from college married the woman that became his better half. They’re a lovely couple, best friends really. They’re also both smart, funny, and driven career people. I admire them.
Marriage is an interesting thing. It changes everything. About a week ago, my friend’s new wife launched a call for help on facebook:
“To my ladies: do you think it is possible to have it all, amazing career and family life? Cause I really don’t see how one or both won’t suffer. Send some tips my way if u have any.”
We’re all her contemporaries, women in our late 20s, so most shrugged but praised their own mothers for somehow managing both a career and motherhood. Someone shared the famously talked about article in the Atlantic. Appropriate. I shared some advice I had heard a few days earlier from the keynote speaker at a luncheon…
Cut to the buffet spread in an upper crust Westchester suburban yacht club. Enter Judge Judy Sheindlin.
Judge Judy had some advice for the young women in the room about “having it all”
I was at the Her Honor Mentoring 2012 kick-off luncheon. I had just re-met my mentee, a 17-year-old high school senior with a passion for all things art and aspirations to travel in adulthood. My fellow Mentors were the county’s leading businesswomen and government leaders. What was I doing there?
No matter. On to the speech:
“You may hear that you can’t have it all – a career and a family. But I’m living proof that you can have it all… if you learn how to negotiate…
In my day, you only left the house in either a white dress or a pine box. But I’m telling you that you don’t have to get married as a high school senior. Or as a freshman. Or as a sophomore or junior. Maybe, by the time you’re a senior you can start to look around to see if there’s anyone you find appealing. But just remember: you may have your act together when you’re 22, but they, well, they may not have their act together at 55.
So have your career. Set the bar for your career high and go out and achieve it. And then, and then start to look to have that family.”
It was a message I was surprised Judge Judy would share with a room full of college seniors yet to make their way and professional women who had all pursued unique paths in their lifetime. On the subject of “having it all,” it was surprisingly pragmatic. As I chuckled and applauded (I was the soul “ain’t that the truth, sister!” shouter in the room), it occurred to me that I was the youngest mentor.
I’m just starting in my career. Sometimes I feel like a little girl trying on her mother’s shoes…
Unlike the other “dynamic,” successful career women in the room, I was really just starting out.
My mother married my father when she was 17 and he was 21. Two weeks ago they celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary. If you do the math, that means they were married some 24 years before I was born. Over that quarter century, my mother made a career for herself, allowing her to retire as a top banking executive when I was starting high school.
Since the Atlantic article came out, there seems to have been another resurgence of feminist talk — or maybe it’s more of another re-evaluation of feminism.
Did you catch this Sunday NYTime’s Opinion piece by Alissa Quart? The one about women hiding their pregnancies in the professional world?
What about the brief speech by a new character on the Good Wife?
I guess I never questioned the idea of “having it all.” I grew up with Judge Judy’s advice as my own game plan because it was a successful path I had watched unfold.
But then my own life began to happen.
I don’t have an answer for my Californian friend. Or for any young woman in our position. Frankly, no one really does.
Here’s what I can say…
The women of our generation are lucky because we have choices. We can choose to be career women. We can choose to be career mothers. We can choose to be both careerwomen and mothers. None of the above paths are easy — none are achieved without sacrificing or without negotiations.
As for me, well, the question of “having it all” isn’t as relevant now as it will be later. But I will say Nicole Sheindlin’s words from that luncheon have stayed with me.
A career is a woman’s insurance policy for independence and self-confidence.
Online dating is a challenge. As websites bombard you with supposedly viable matches and your inbox fills with messages and winks from men who think you’re “a cutie” or “reeeeeally cool,” you think: it would be nice if there was a road map to help me weed out the guys I could walk arm in arm with from the ones I may need a restraining order against.
After months of scanning, surveying, replying, blocking, and first-dating, here it is, to your rescue:
The Online Dating Match Approval Matrix.
(in the style of New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix)
The Online Dating Approval Matrix -- Your Guide to Finding Mr. (Almost) Right Online
In the 8th grade, "Life's Little Instruction Book" was required reading. our teachers felt learning secularized parables would be more beneficial for our intellectual growth
Rather than learn the art of well-crafted sentences through a standard curriculum of books like The Jungle Book, the English department of my sleepy suburban school handed out copies of Life’s Little Instruction Book and Chicken Soup for the Soul to my 8th grade class. The thought must have been that learning secularized parables would be more beneficial for our intellectual growth.
Eventually, we were charged with the assignment of creating our own Life’s Little Instruction Book. We knew nothing of the real world and yet we were going to act as authorities on “how to live a happy and rewarding life.”
I recently found my flamboyantly illustrated attempt and was amused. “Don’t worry if you’re not the prettiest rose. We’re all beautiful in our own light” — my teacher found this little stroke of transcendental wisdom endearing. If I had to rewrite my 8th grade book of advice today, I might include that same instruction, though perhaps rewritten with less sentimentality, and add a few other insights I’ve picked up in the 13 years I’ve traveled since…
Invest in at least 1 Ina Garten cookbook. The orange scones in this one are an ace.
1. Invest in at least one Ina Garten cookbook
2. (Re)read Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”
It's true there are more male names in my address book than female ones. But it's not a "little black book" list of names. I'm a PJ and they're "My Boys"
I was standing at the laundry sink in our basement, vigorously scrubbing at the oversize blueberry stain on my favorite knock-around sundress (that’s never coming out!) when my father decided it was a good time to get the lowdown on my social life. Though I was armed with spray n’ wash and totally focused on rescuing the pink of my seersucker dress from a purple fate, I gave him an appropriate summary of my outings and updated him on the lives of the friends I knew interested him most.
He was glad I was still in touch with “Tennis” Mike and “Granola” Dan. He encouraged me to visit “DC” Sarah and “New Zealand” Sarah soon (“sure, Dad, if you foot the bill!). He was happy “Cupcake” Cassidy was still fencing and that “Fencing” Mike was still my CityChase partner. Yet, while I thought I had covered all his favorites, it was clear he was unsatisfied with my narrative…
“How come you know and hang out with all these guys and none of them ask you out to dinner?”
I put down the scrub brush, placed my hand on my hip, screwed-up my eyebrows in quizzical disbelief. Had my father, just asked me why I didn’t have a boyfriend? Et tu, Daddy?! I thought you thought weddings were “grotesque.”
Without skipping a beat he moved on.
“The next day that isn’t too hot, I’m going to make sure you can change the tires on your car. Clearly, you’ll need to know how to do that on your own.”
“Well then,” I replied, “why don’t you also teach me how to change my oil and rewire a lamp, because clearly there isn’t going to be a guy to do these things for me.”
“No,” he said. “I’d better teach you how to load a dishwasher. You can always get a mechanic to change your oil…you’ll have a much harder time finding someone willing to tackle the kitchen when you’re done with it.”
I'm a talent in the kitchen... particularly at making a mess in one.
They Told Me to Find a Rich Husband 