The Marriage-Go-Round by Andrew J. Cherlin, a demographer and sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, makes the case that Americans venerate and practice marriage with more fervor than their Western nation counterparts. For many or most Americans, marriage represents the non plus ultra of human relationships.

Then there’s reality, the often ugly aftermath of marriage — the 50% divorce rate.

According to Cherlin, “‘two powerful forces are at war in America, a historic belief in marriage grounded in our religious heritage on the one hand and a foundational principle of individual freedom and a post-modern sense of the right to self-fulfillment on the other. When these values clash, breakup and divorce follow.’” We tend to rush into relationships, and we tend to suffer the unintended consequences.

Americans voted for the Obama platform, but also for the Obama relationship. We feel their chemistry. We approve of the way they treat each other,  at least in public. But you can’t fake tenderness. Theirs seems to be a marriage in the best sense of the word, a model to emulate in our own personal lives.

Which begs the question: How did this seemingly close-to-perfect union come to be in the first place? Michelle has gone on record that she and Barack were friends first.

In an April, 2009 interview with Oprah, the first lady says: “Barack is a human being with flaws. And I can rattle down all the flaws and tease him about them every day, but those flaws are not fundamental. They don’t hit upon things that are intolerable to me. In terms of his core values, he has never disappointed me. … I don’t lose sight of the fact that he’s the president, but first and foremost he’s my husband, my friend, and the father of my children. That didn’t change with his hand on the Lincoln Bible. But it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the gravity of what he’s doing. The way I can honor that is by working by his side and adding value to what he’s doing in any way that I can.”

A  July, 2008 Chicago Sun Times story, encapsulates their romance:

“Michelle Robinson was a first-year attorney at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. Word rippled through the law office that a hot-shot Harvard law student would be working at the firm that summer. The future Michelle Obama saw a photograph of the new hire and was less than dazzled.

‘I thought, OK, he’s probably not all that terrific, and he’s probably kind of a clown, and then I found out that his name was Barack Obama….And like everybody else, I thought, ‘Well, what kind of name is that?’
And then Michelle learned she’d been assigned to mentor the new guy. In the flesh, though, Barack was less geeky than he appeared in his photo, and he wasn’t the cocky Harvard student she’d been expecting.

He had both a worldly charm and a genuine desire to help the less-fortunate. Michelle found herself laughing at the same things as Barack. If she was cynical about something, he seemed to see it that way, too.

‘I was charmed, and we became instant friends after [the] first conversation,’ Michelle Obama said.”

They dated for two-plus years. Barack Obama was a bit skittish about the institution of marriage, but finally caved and proposed to his best friend and lover, Michelle.

Friends first. Friends forever.

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There is so much content online, and now alltop.com arrives to sort it out and make it more readily available to people like you and me. Narrowing my search on alltop to just relationships, dating, online dating, or sex still produces an abundance of recent posts and articles from various sources, reliable, and not so much. …Articles authored by writers serious and talented, and not so much. Of value to the reader in that they exist to edify, entertain, and nourish the mind, or not so much. Articles posted maybe for nefarious purposes such as driving traffic, revenues, or other forces which cause the writer to whore him or herself to the market.

Not that I haven’t done that, or am doing that too. We all must eat. Even FlirtySomething’s Queen Bee. Yes, I am selling my new dating site, FlirtySomething.com. Yes, I wish it to become profitable as a business and to return my investment of time, energy, and $. But more fundamentally, we exist to put a buzz in your ear, to excite and amuse, and to get to the heart of matters of the heart — with special focus on online dating and singles ISO.

With that lengthy disclaimer/introduction/drumroll, I’m here to discuss the Golden Rule, the only rule, and the only real counsel to keep on your journey through every online dating conundrum.

It’s so simple — there are no rules to successful relationships or happy dating that differ from rules for success and happiness in general. So, to simplify your dating life, just remember the one rule that really matters — simply treat people — even those with whom you can play out your deepest Freudian issues and fantasies — as you wish to be treated.

It’s not called the Golden Rule because is worthless, especially now, when weeding out the wheat from the chaff is potentially so much more complicated. More people, more technology, more halls of mirrors.

How exactly the Golden Rule plays out on the dating landscape, I leave to you to discuss via your own comments and stories.

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How crass have homo sapiens become? I ran across this article about a recent speed dating event featuring men with big wallets and women with big attributes of the gold digger kind. Decide for yourself.

I’ve never attended a speed dating event but suppose it could be kind of like a moveable feast. You get to test the chemistry with not one but a whole roomful of strangers, all in one fell swoop. One shower and shave, one carefully assembled ensemble, one trip across town. Not for just one first meeting with a potential soul mate. No, to meet a roomful of candidates. Exponentially increasing the odds that you’ll blend well with someone. Right?

Not necessarily. Success at speed dating it seems would also depend on how promiscuous you are, meaning easy to blend with. Setting aside all Puritanical or otherwise derived connotations commonly associated with the word, promiscuous originated in chemistry, and meant two substances that blend easily.

Speed dating — I picture squirrels in ties and heels racing from table to table trading inanities, chomping on nuts, appraising each other. Like Bartleby, I think to myself, “I’d prefer not to.”

How about slow-dating, on the other hand? That’s where you get lost in conversation, and time recedes into the background. Some moments are captured in your memory for playback. You’re so inside other moments, you can’t even remember a lot of the date, just that it was a very pleasant respite from an often hectic life. That’s when I enjoy a date!

A slow date is a slice of life…Salsa dancing on the sidewalk…Watching a swimmer emerge from the night sea…Holding hands as you cross the street…

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Situation: You meet a guy or gal online, offline, in line…wherever. You make and keep a date with that person. In its aftermath, you wonder how they felt about the date, and you’d like to let them know what you’re thinking too. For better or worse, it’s only human to reflect and to want to communicate.

Something feels too overt, too forward, too aggressive about either phoning or emailing this person. But you want to tell them that their profile picture doesn’t do them justice, or that you’re not used to a guy opening the car door, or to generally communicate that you’d like to go out again, or not….

As a service for singles in search of a soul mate, FlirtySomething is all about making the journey as fun, frustration-free, and functional as possible.

• So we devised the Apres Date Review system — to provide a dynamic new communication channel for FlirtySomething members.
•  Sign up or sign in to FlirtySomething today and post an Apres Date Review about the last date you went on. Don’t worry, the review will not be published with your profile unless both you and your date approve!
• Please send us any feedback, comments, critiques of your experience using the FlirtySomething Apres Date Review system.

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I received the following story from a FlirtySomething member. It’s a cautionary tale, and one most online daters can relate to.

“Randy was handsome, English, and his favorite movie was Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. ‘Looks aren’t important to me,’ his profile said. ‘I’m looking for personality.’ I emailed him, and he responded within the hour.

We moved quickly from email to phone calls to first date. He was as attractive in person as in his photo – a full head of wavy red hair, rugged face with twinkling blue eyes. After a game of pool, he kissed me unexpectedly across the table. Nice. And that English accent. Doesn’t anything said with an English accent sound classy?

Still, with all his attractive traits, something didn’t seem right. I determined to meet him again, but to hold back on getting too interested.

We went on dates weekly for the next month. He was charming, interesting – full of stories. He had traveled. He took classes, even one in watercolor. The perfect man?

There was one very strange thing about Randy. On each of our dates, when it was time to order drinks, I’d order something non-alcoholic. And every time, yes, every time, he’d ask me why I didn’t drink. He’d probe for reasons. It usually took fifteen minutes to convince him I really didn’t like alcohol, as though he hadn’t heard exactly the same explanation the week before. It was odd.

Finally, my intuition told me that despite all his obvious attributes, there was no connection. I met him at a local bar, and gave him the ‘this isn’t working’ speech. It went well. We agreed to end as friends.

‘Now that we’re friends,’ I said, ‘I can ask you something that’s been driving me crazy. Why is it that every time we go out, you ask me why I don’t drink? Don’t you remember from the last time?’

He paused and looked thoughtful. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘first, forgive me for my forgetfulness regarding your beverage preferences, but now that we’re friends, I suppose I can tell you. I’ve been very busy these last few weeks. About the same time you contacted me on the dating site, two other women contacted me. I’ve been seeing all of you each week, waiting to see who I wanted to be with. I’ve slept with both of them, and I was just waiting to sleep with you before I decided who the winner was. And, I guess, alcohol consumption is usually a good prelude for that.’

I beamed. He looked at me in confusion.

‘What?’ he asked.

I could not relax the smile that I could feel stretching from ear to ear. ‘You make me so happy! So very happy!”

‘But why?’ I’d just broken up with him: how could I be happy?

I placed my hands on Randy’s shoulders and looked him square in the face. He had just revealed to me that I had escaped being one of the women in an unannounced sex contest. He was handsome and charming, and there was no chance I was going to sleep with him only to find out that he was sleeping with two other women while he waited to find out who was ‘best.’ Life was good.

‘Because I’m not dating you,’ I told him. ‘Because I’m not dating you!”’

______

Actually, it’s kind of a pedestrian story in the online dating universe. Most of us online daters, especially, have been part of such a competition, wittingly and unwittingly. And it begs the following questions:

1. Do you think comparison shopping-for-the-best girlfriend/boyfriend is inherent in online dating?

2. When do you take your dating profile out of play? Should two people have a “taking our profiles out of play” conversation? Why, and when?

3. Have you ever broken it off with someone early on because they were always on Match.com or POF, even as you two were seeing each other?

4. Have you yourself been an online dating-aholic?

Please post all your favorite dating stories, hellish to hilarious to heavenly…on FlirtySomething.com  of FlirtySomething’s Facebook page today!

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How apropos that “Mercy” is today’s Daily Tao Meditation. The verse reads: “Uphold precepts, but be merciful./Gradually absorb, until there is no need for law./Gain wisdom beyond right and wrong.” The “church folks” who are so afraid of their own latent “queer” nature and, therefore, against gay marriage might do well to ponder these lines.

Leaving aside the core fact that gay marriage is a civil right, and that the California Supreme Court’s idiotic, pernicious, and unconstitutional ruling this week upholding Proposition 8 makes me almost consider moving to Iowa, let’s look at the stupidity of denying marriage rights from a strictly economic standpoint. [For a short and to-the-point analysis of the horrific legal ramifications of the ruling, see Bennet Kelley’s piece on Huffington Post.]

Amidst the most dismal economic news of my lifetime (spanning six decades), I’d like to take a deep breath and argue for equal marriage rights, not ONLY because it’s the ethical and compassionate thing to do, but also because marriage is good for the economy!

Even the  Christian Science Monitor, while demurring on the ethics of same sex marriage, underscores this very point in an article published in the wake this week’s California ruling.

The article features a Provincetown, MA florist, Maghi Geary, who has 20-30 weddings booked for the summer. Gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts since 2003, and in Provincetown, more than 2,000 same-sex couples have tied the knot since then. At an average cost of $30,000 per wedding, gay marriage has been a boon to the local economy.

Moreover, for Massachusetts, and presumably any state with equal marriage rights, direct revenue from gay marriage comes from three main sources:

• Marriage licenses.

• Income taxes are generally higher for married couples than they are for single filers, because many married couples have two incomes, which drives them into a higher tax bracket and incurs a “marriage penalty.” This is particularly true for same-sex couples, who are even more likely than heterosexual couples to have two incomes.

• Third, same-sex marriage decreases costs for state benefit programs. Since marriage – whether gay or heterosexual – provides a safety net for spouses, an expansion of marriage results in more people becoming ineligible for state benefits.

According to a 2004 study by Forbes magazine, the wedding industry could grow by more than $16 billion if gay marriage were expanded to all 50 states.

Critics may argue that gay marriage creates new burdens for companies by expanding the list of employees for whom they would have to offer spousal benefits. But research indicates this burden is minute, adding approximately 1-2% to companies’ healthcare costs.

In fact, during that brief moment in history between California Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage, first in its favor, then this week upholding Proposition 8, gay folks were flocking to California en masse to get married. Gay Californians were throwing themselves big weddings, and, according to an ABC news report, California experienced a much-needed economic boost.

So, I conclude, dear readers, by saying that although I am not gay, I am also not a bigot, nor am I stupid. I say, let’s repeal Proposition 8, and while we’re at it, legalize marijuana. (I’ll leave that argument for another time.) During this economic crisis, we can no longer afford to be so stubbornly wrong-headed!

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A_. cut my hair the other day at
Carefree Haircutting on 2nd Street in Belmont Shore. You can hardly tell. That’s why I go to her. And I like her personality. I’m not a salon girl. But I like A_. She knows her way around my head, and she has me in and out in 15 minutes.

She’s a curly-haired redhead in her mid-twenties from a family of farmers and truck drivers in Buffalo, New York. She just got her first solo apartment in Long Beach, and she’s really enjoying the privacy and autonomy that affords her. She said she’s not going out so compulsively. In fact, she loves to stay home now and cook dinner and luxuriate in her singlehood. Her favorite meal is Sloppy Joes. Kind of a throwback…

She met a really nice guy recently, a Spaniard. They’ve gone out a couple of times, but she’s taking it slow. For the first time, she’s able to communicate her feelings with a guy, she told me. Apparently, this guy from Spain has tapped into something in her that eluded the farmers and truck drivers she grew up with. He showed up at the salon while A_ was cutting my hair. Surprised her with a large Jamba Juice. Maybe he’ll teach her a thing or two about nutrition! Looking forward to next haircut and a progress report on this budding relationship.

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Let’s face it. Sometimes you don’t know whether there’s chemistry on the first date, or maybe little red flags went up when he referred to a certain demographic as “those people”, or when he called his mother a narcissist. But she’s cute or he made you laugh. So you’re not sure about whether to book a second date. Three tips about second dates:

1. Use FlirtySomething’s Apres Date system. Write an Apres Date Review about the first date. It’s a nuanced way to communicate with someone you’re not sure about. The system is easy to use and walks you through the process step by step. Once your review is completed, the system will guide you in sending an invitation to your date to read what you’ve written about him or her. Your review will summarize what you did on your date, how you think the date went, whether or not you’d like to book a second date and why (or you can select not to answer that question). And if you met your date on FlirtySomething, the system will ask you to rate the accuracy of his or her FlirtySomething profile. In order to read your review, your date will first have to post one too. The pair of date reviews are confidential between you and your date unless you both choose to publish them in your FlirtySomething profiles.

2. Let’s say you both post Apres Date Reviews. One of you has indicated a strong interest in booking a second date. This makes the situation somewhat promising. At the very worst, the second date will clarify whether to go forward most likely right from the git-go, I’ve found. If it’s no, you can make it a quickie. Don’t ever book a concert or play for an iffy second date. Keep it loose, and allow yourself a polite early exit strategy. Either way, go forward or jump ship; the second date will make it very clear.

3. If you’re lonely and bored, book a second date. What have you got to lose? In fact, if it’s really really bad, at the very least, it will help you to experience your loneliness and boredom in a whole new way!

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I’m convinced that online, as elsewhere, most “content” is empty, and also that a frequent indicator of something not worth reading is a title that announces a big topic broken into x-number of stages, phases, steps or whatever.

But ISO inspirational, educational, or entertaining material on dating to share with my readers, I clicked into the “8 phases of dating” and was pleasantly surprised!

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Steve joined the ranks of online daters just recently, and posts this story of his first Match.com in-person meeting. In the interim, he has joined FlirtySomething and has been having much better luck with the ladies. Here’s his story:

At about the time Barack Obama was announcing his plans to run for president my marriage of ten years was ending ignominiously. Do they ever end otherwise? Plenty of accountability to go around, but that’s not what this is about. A couple of years later the On-the-Rebound relationship I had sling-shot myself into after the marriage also came to a close. She moved 800 miles away, but that’s not what this is about either. And then my job went away.  But this isn’t about that either.

So it was that I greeted the onset of summer 2009 with a sense that things couldn’t get much worse. One consequence of which was my decision to try online dating. It promised, if not a cure for my ills, at least something new, a distraction. Time Magazine reports that online dating skyrockets during periods of economic stress. But I’m pretty sure this thought came from errant neurons somewhere in my temporal lobe spewing dopamine when they should of have been doing serotonin. But whatever the chemical or economic origins, online dating went to the top of my to do list.

It was an unaccountably attractive idea. First, there was the novelty of using the ‘net for something other than job hunting. And porn. This would be a new digital frontier. Second, let’s face it, companionship is an important part of a well-balanced life. So with credit card and password in hand, I became a fledgling member of Match.com.

The first challenge for the online dating neophyte is to create the persona he wishes to project to the universe of prospective companions. This is done by way of posting your personal profile. Writing this detailed story of your life is nothing if not tedious.  What do you do for work? (“Nothing” probably doesn’t work). What do you do for fun? (I have varied interests). What are your Favorite Things? (Blah blah blah), Your Favorite Hot Spots? (Yada yada). What have you read recently? What about your pets? And your answer to every nutty question will have a direct impact on your online dating success. So, while eager, I knew I needed to proceed thoughtfully and with care.

Drafting a description of myself that would create just the right balance of youthful maturity, intellectual capacity and physical virility was not easy. But with an active imagination, some help from the New York Times Book Review for the question “What have you read recently?”, and several successive café americanos, the profile took shape and my online dating career was launched.

Fast forward to the first date. My intent was to approach this event with no expectations. British Beach Babe, as she called herself in her profile, was a former Playboy Bunny. Not the kind of bunny in the centerfold, it turns out, but the kind that served cocktails at the playboy club in London. Plus, you had to admire the alliteration of British Beach Babe. Annie, her real life name, had clearly been beautiful in a spunky, Tippi Hedren sort of way. But those days were several decades and a few thousand cartons of Marlboros ago. So, from the moment I first laid eyes on her, I was called upon to silently invoke my mantra:  “You are here with no expectations. You are here with no expectations.”

She asked me in and offered a tour of her patio vegetable garden. Very nice, though the tour’s narrative was a bit slurred, and I noted during the next 15 or 20 minutes her consuming three more large glasses of wine. Which, of course, only aggravated the slurring. Okay then.

At the restaurant we spoke of the usual first date topics: our children’s careers, our own careers, the ups and downs of online dating … and her dependency on prescription pain killers. Stifling the urge to request the check immediately, I smiled and nodded and hailed the waiter when she was ready for the next glass of wine. And the next. When we got back to her door I demurred on the suggestion of a night cap.  Awfully late, I’ve got polo practice in the morning. She understood completely.

I should probably say here that I decided a long time ago to quit drinking and have been sober coming on 15 years. But I don’t expect anyone else to modify their behavior because I’ve made this choice. I’m perfectly comfortable being around others who are enjoying a glass of wine or a cocktail.  But Annie probably exceeded her level of tolerance before we left for dinner.

The next morning I sent off the following email:

Dear Annie,

Thank you for a memorable evening. In reviewing our time together I have concluded that the disparities in our lifestyles are too great to allow a mutually beneficial relationship to unfold.  I wish you the very best and know you will find a suitable companion if you keep at it.

Best,

<!–[if supportFields]> CONTACT _Con-3C7F7DEE1 c s l <![endif]–>Steve<!–[if supportFields]><![endif]–>

A few days later I received a reply that appeared to be written in a garbled language I have never seen before, and I quote:

Drrrr steve../.k iam sooo sryo yyouo[ di’nt lik me. To bd. It wsnt  ment to be/.k.

I swear.

British Beach Babe has not been heard from since.

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