So many *ings

Everyone knows about ghosting, and I've previously posted about breadcrumbing, and now apparently, submarining is a thing. And everything in between: ghosting, haunting, and benching. 

Dating is hard without any of that, and I've had my share of relationships (serious and lesser) that in retrospect I could've done without, but I'm ever so grateful for every clean break, and every instance of closure. 

I was just light-ghosted last week--ghosting after one date isn't technically ghosting, but it was still inconsiderate. I'd just a month or so ago acted differently (i.e., more honorably) in a similar situation: I went out with someone once (and didn't want to see him again), but we'd corresponded enough in frequency and substance that I thought it was right to actually turn him down rather than disappear. I've certainly not responded to men's asking me out on a second date, but that was when there was really nothing to say. So I'd gone out with a dude a week and a half ago, and we'd had plans to go out again and had been actively chatting by email, when he abruptly disappeared. I had my reservations about this guy (but I thought he was worth a second date--that's all), so it wasn't a huge disappointment practically. But it was just annoying.

And I have a serial breadcrumber who roared full force into my life this past week. I have no feelings for this man, but I just wish he f* off forever because I don't want to be reminded that he's there. That is evidently not going to happen; we are apparently destined to troll each other indefinitely. But there's a silver lining, as we have to actually communicate: The next best thing to zero contact, is closure.

***
On Monday I posted a column from Carolyn in which she talks about being happy for people who have what you don't. This isn't generally a problem for me--I have an easy time being happy for my friends--but I do sometimes fall into spells of 'why (not) me?' I talk myself through that and try to get to gratitude for what I do have, which is nothing to sneeze at. But what pushes me into the questioning is seeing people for whom it looks so easy. Which is when it helps to remind myself (not out of schadenfreude, but out of perspective, that dating sucks for most people. That's why the internet is riddled with articles about ghosting and submarining. I guess we'll get through this together. 

Well, this hurts

That gaping-hole feeling was merely delayed; it hit me this morning, even before I started stumbling upon the reminders of the relationship: his toothbrush, his towel, the coffee maker that I don't use. And, now that I think about it, a bunch of medium-roast coffee that works best in the coffee maker rather than my prefererred French press, so I guess I'll be leaving the coffee maker out for a while. The treats he got for Gracie (I have no intention to keep giving them to her). Why does this stuff bother me more than the flowers? Why doesn't the overwhelmingness of our incompatibility blunt the pain?

Notes from an even more amicable break-up

I spent the last couple of weeks--but especially this past week--second-guessing my overwhelming sense that the relationship I was in, was doomed. The things that were not working were adding up and it was getting increasingly harder to believe that they could be overcome, even in the face of the many things that were working. On Thursday, I came home from work and cried over the realization that the relationship couldn't be saved. By Friday morning, I thought maybe I was tired and overwhelmed and should give it more time. I was too busy during the day (and evening) to give it any thought, but this morning, I didn't miss him or feel excited about seeing him tonight. When we sat down to dinner, facing each other, I undeniably felt nothing.

I couldn't believe he didn't (not) feel it to, but he did. We were walking around after dinner, and he stopped and asked me if I thought the relationship was working. He didn't think it was. I agreed. We were both sad. I was less so, because I'd gotten my sad out a couple of days ago and at this point I was mostly left with relief--that post-break-up relief of no longer having to dismiss the accumulating dealbreakers. I'd say, also, that the complete, instant closure--the lack of misunderstanding or recrimination, the absense of any need to wonder what went wrong--goes a long way toward easing the pain.

This was, interestingly, the first time my friends didn't try to talk me out of trusting my instincts. Out at trivia the other night, I enumerated the things that weren't working and said I just had a bad feeling about things. I expected my friends, who were in the throes of dating, to tell me to count my blessings, but they acknowledged that my instincts were probably onto something.

The man, on the other hand, was not as forthcoming. I'd felt for at least a week that it would be better to break it off, but that breaking it off was going to hurt. Last weekend, when I didn't hear from M. for, say, 36 hours (eventually, more than 48), I suspected something even though I knew he wasn't the ghosting kind. I started to emotionally prepare myself for our not being together, and I was mostly okay with it but it stung. To the point where, when I did hear from him latish Monday, I was relieved--even though I felt that we were just postponing the inevitable.

So here's what's interesting: I told him explicitly that I'd started to plan for not seeing him again (i.e., I'd made certain decisions around the assumption that we wouldn't be getting together on Tuesday night, as previously planned). He was shocked. He just had a lot of work, he said. Did I think things weren't going well? The way he asked implied that the very thought was absurd. He wouldn't just ghost, he assured me. I knew that, I told him, but there are levels of emotional distancing lesser to ghosting.

He wasn't feigning the shock; it just hadn't all come together for him. After I called him on it, he started wondering why he hadn't texted me all weekend. Sure, he was busy, but that hadn't ever stopped him before. [This, my friends, is a lesson in 'He's Just Not That Into You,' and I picked up on it even before he did.] This made him think about our relationship, which meant coming to the conclusion that things weren't working. It wasn't all in my head--either the dealbreakers or his distancing, even when his words tried to tell me that it was.

So we got together on Tuesday. We didn't talk about it, even though I brought it up. Being with him was more exhausting than anything else, not just because we were both tired. It felt like work. On Wednesday, I vented to my friends. On Thursday, I came home and cried. On Friday and this morning, I reverted to denial, but part of me knew the denial wasn't sustainable. This morning and early afternoon, getting together with another friend, I talked about how I just didn't think it was going to work. This evening, I saw him and I felt nothing. Later in the evening, we broke up, and I felt relief. I haven't cried, even though there's a tinge of sadness. I haven't thrown out his flowers and feel no need to. I feel no need to purge my house or electronics of signs of him. He asked if I wanted to stay friends, I demured. I believe in a clean break and don't really see the point. He said goodbye to the cat--he liked her at least as much as he liked me--and left. We parted on very good terms. I'm a little sad, but I don't feel a gaping hole in the fiber of my being.

Even the immediate, pragmatic things I'm relieved about--having the rest of this evening and tomorrow to myself; having the bed to myself; not having to go to yet another restaurant tomorrow because this guy doesn't like to eat in--are things that would've been of no comfort to me two months ago, and would be of no comfort to me now at the expense of a relationship I wanted to be in. It's time to move on when you think, oh, good, I'm not going to wake up next to him tomorrow.

I don't regret that we dated; I think we learned a lot from each other. I enjoyed getting to know him as a person. I benefitted from getting a stronger understanding of what wasn't negotiable to me, even when I tried to tell myself it wasn't a big deal. Maybe one or two of those things would've been fine, but they were adding up. I feel entirely comfortable holding onto them. I feel more comfortable than ever being who I am, and either knowing that there's someone out there who's looking for it to, and/or it's nevertheless who I am and what I need.

Sunday roundup

Silver lining of this nasty. misogynistic election: men are starting to understand women's reality and how to change things:

Men have begun asking themselves what they can do to intervene in cases of sexual harassment or denigration – how not to stand by silently. Mothers and fathers have been asking how to raise sons who do not act like this.

Some men, anyway.

Mr. Fortenberry told Mr. Pence that his young daughter had come to him and said, “Daddy, Donald Trump hates women,” according to one of the lawmakers, who both insisted on anonymity to recount a private conversation.

“It’s just not true,” Mr. Pence shot back, arguing that Mr. Trump was improving with women, the two House Republicans said.

Hillary has a long history of being demonized, and no one's saying she's perfect, and yes she's hawkish, but she's pretty good. 

 

Wikileaks is a force for censorship, not transparency.

 

Gary Kasporov on what a rigged election looks like. Is there hope for Russia?

If dairy weren't a climate and cruelty nightmare, I'd support Chobani for its support of refugees.

Mental illness isn't a joke or a spectacle.
Parenting isn't off-limits to criticism.

I am disinclined to trust Quartz on anything science-related (they just bungled the basics of an article on nuclear) but this is a fairly interesting piece on the science of dressing up.

The history of a fake but successful British accent in America.

Saturday roundup

Russia's intense outreach imperialism by other (i.e., religious) means.

The world needs sustainable farming.

In case you had doubts, it's safe to raise vegan children.

I blogged the other day about cultural appropriation, and I come down about where Robin Givhan does: it exists but not everything is it.

Creative people regularly dive into treacherous cultural waters. And they should be prepared for backlash. They should know what they are doing and be able to explain their choices. They should be sensitive and respectful.

And observers should remember that not every cross-cultural moment is cause for outrage. Jacobs’s models were a mixed group of women: black, brown, white. Should all the models have been black? Why? How would that validate pink dreadlocks? The clothes were a punk, street, cyber, sparkle fest. Hate the clothes or love them. But the outrage just seems like an exhausting exercise in misdirection.

Innovation takes a village:

Evolutionary biologist Joe Henrich of the University of British Columbia, who recently wrote a book on the role of culture in the success of our species, expects that will indeed turn out to be the case. “I think the idea that innovation depends on individual geniuses is misguided. History shows that inventions invariably build on earlier findings that are recombined and improved upon. Most of the things we use every day are inventions that no single human being could ever design within her lifetime,” he observes. “Rather than the product of individual innovators, these inventions can be thought of as the product of our societies. Innovations rely on individuals learning from others—in that way, human society functions like a collective brain.”

Astronauts and Olymic cyclists (and other women) don't need your mansplaining.

This woman actively talked to her sons about consent, but they still don't entirely get it. 

Women have a right to be complicated, too. Even before "Mad Men" came up, I thought of Don Draper (and also the TV version of Bill Masters) while reading this article. I also thought, the reason we're so turned off by Lena Dunham's character in "Girls" is because she's perfectly horrible. Is that necessarily a gender thing? Hannah H. is no Don Draper.

On maintaining your values and being single:

pursuing the things I genuinely care about is more important to me than hiding who I am to remain “datable” for a man who may or may not show up.

Dating in D.C. had been fine, meh, whatever. But despite my feminist sensibilities, I was lonely. No, I didn’t need a partner to be whole, and yes, I’d rather be Forever Alone than with the wrong person. But I’d never planned on being single THIS LONG.

On dating with cats:

Why do single women get judged for having cats? Society has a bad habit of scrutinizing women for how we live and whom we love. Replace “cat” with “dog” in any of the above instances, and I’d be considered hot — a catch even! — rather than crazy. If I were in a relationship, I’d be one half of a cute animal-loving couple.

And if I were a man, I’d be a magnet for women. What does America call a man with three cats? He’s just a man. Women are held to a different standard than men, and cats to a different standard than dogs.

Alicia keys on the tyranny of makeup. Her detractors prove her right.

I am willing to have a child if she grows up to be anything like this one.

This so reminds me of RM! He would always question me about what I did at work or what I did at work on a given day, and never got the hint that I had nothing to say on the matter.

There are people in DC who can afford exhorbitant tasting menus.

Lighter Monday roundup

I just couldn't talk about this stuff in the same post as those horrendous stories.

Apparently the majority of women think there's something wrong with their bodies (including their breasts).

I wrote the other day about how Rebecca Traister's "All the Single Ladies" was a snapshot into my life. The Times today ran a piece that could be called "All the Single Ladies: China edition."

“Because they are highly educated, they hold well-paid jobs, they lose the financial incentive to get married,” says Zhang Xiaobo, a professor of economics at Peking University’s National School of Development.

OMG, this is my life:

Suitable mates are simply hard to find, said Ms. Cheng, who describes many men her age as “not mature or irresponsible.” Referring to another former boyfriend, she said: “When we wanted to do something, or go for food, he only liked to act cute and say with a smile, ‘We’ll do whatever you like.’ It made me feel like I had a son.” 

It reminds me of that line--Lili Taylor's line--from Mystic Pizza: "I'm not going to marry an asshole! It's the 80's! Why would I marry an asshole?" My sentiments exactly.

Changing topics, this piece about the Mediterranean diet pinpoints--I never could--what I hate about the word 'foodie.' Someone called me that once, and I recoiled.

“There is no word for ‘foodie’ in Italian. Food is central to everyone’s life here. It’s normal to care deeply about food.” Quality and taste are held to a high standard in Italy and throughout the Mediterranean. There is a great respect for the craft of food production, and although dishes are often prepared simply, excellent ingredients are valued and shortcuts that compromise quality shunned. It was an important reminder of the wisdom of moving away from low-quality, hyper-processed foods — which are often laden with unhealthy additives, sodium and sugar — in favor of top-notch ingredients, served close to their source and simply prepared.

In the same way that I hate when people (eg RM) obsess about how "healthily" I eat. I just eat food. The best pinpointing of that was in the article about how France has never embraced superfoods, which have less appeal when people just eat food.

I guess at the root of it, it's weird to see people fetishize or exoticize something that's second-nature to me. Almost in the same way that it's weird to see high-end Russian food sold for a fortune. I've been making Russian beet salad every weekend--to last the week and at a cost of a few dollars. The Russian food that goes for a premium at restaurants is similar to what's derided as "poor people food" (another term that shocked me, for various reasons, the first time I heard it years ago).

RM isn't the only one who associates nutritious eating with some kind of cultish mania. There are people who legitimately think that eating healthily is a sacrifice. I have a morbidly obese family friend who just can't get past the idea that, at heart, I really want to eat animal products and my dietary choices are based on preternatural restraint. In fact, I don't believe that sustained dietary habits can be based on restraint; you have to truly love and enjoy your food. And I do. I eat my beet salad (which is really a salad of root vegetables), and my very flavorful pasta, and I feel for the paleos or other carbophobes who don't allow themselves those foods.

While we're on the topic of things people don't get: style is not only a personal thing, but a body-type thing. Clothes made for larger women don't work for smaller women, not just because of proportions. Larger women can pull off bolder, more experimental things. (I cannot.) This was a constant battle with my mother before she lost her mind: she would constantly try to foist on me clothes that would look awful. She insisted that they were very trendy, etc., and they well may have been but they wouldn't have worked on me. My first rule of clothing (and shoes) is, wear the clothes and shoes; don't let them wear you.

I would not say hard

I blogged yesterday, not for the first time, about my struggles with dating. I've blogged before about specific terrible dates and about how dating, generally, sucks. To quote Moira Weigel from that article, it “often feels like the worst, most precarious form of contemporary labor: an unpaid internship.” Paradoxically, it may be what sucks most about being single, which makes it tempting to opt out. We date because we hope that there's something worth it on the other side.

So you'd think I'd have wholeheartedly agreed with this piece, and though I hear her, I don't identify with her plight (and some things are objectively incorrect--for example, it's statistically easier to stay fit and eat well when you're single). I don't necessarily agree that being single is harder. There are things about being single that are hard, and there are things about being partnered that are hard. Making a marriage work is hard. Divorce, from what I hear, is really f*ing hard.

As Rebecca Traister and others have expertly pointed out, women are increasingly staying single because it's never been easier. We're good at life. We partner up only for the right reasons, and not because society makes it impossible to stay single. The calculus of being in a less than optimal relationship has shifted dramatically over the decades. For example,

For women, the marriage calculus is pretty simple: you can only reap the full benefits of today’s optimal marriage when your partner is an equal who pitches in and treats you well.

One reason that it's hard for me to date successfully is that I love my life--almost everything about it--and I'm not willing to give those things up (especially for a less than optimal relationship). I'm not willing to move to the suburbs. I'm not willing to commute. I'm not willing to eat meat. Clearly, I value the opposite--living in the city, having an easy commute, eating according to my values--more than having an easier time dating. But even as I fucking hate dating. If anything, I've learned to be pickier in various ways. Because the issue isn't that being single is hard; it's that I have reason to believe that having an optimal relationship is worth the work of finding it. It better be, because the search is a bitch.

Dating in DC

Can I take a break from dating? I so hate it. Every part of it and every kind of it: e-dating, speed dating, irl dating. There's an element of it that's interesting--it's an insight into these other humans. Humans of DC. Human males of DC. The stew of humanity that is DC.

The guy at speed dating who looked bored until he could talk about his cat--specifically, his cat's litter-box habits--at which point he perked up and didn't want to talk about anything else.

The guy who messaged me, who, in his profile, writes about how much he loves animals. And also hot dogs. The guy who goes on about how he can't stand pretentious people, only to follow up with pretentious quotes and other lines. This is also the guy who started his message to me with "oh snap" (if it matters, what followed did not work with 'oh snap'). The guys (I told you about these) who think women are "obligated" to keep their legs shaved.

The guy who talked about how he wouldn't shop at Whole Foods because they didn't have 'normal' ketchup. He's very serious about his ketchup and will only buy the best known brand. He puts ketchup on everything so it really matters to him. This is also the guy who kept glancing down at my chest periodically, presumably to make sure it was still there.

The guys who declare themselves "cute" or "attractive" (um, isn't that a subjective measure? a designation to be determined by someone else?). The guy who has the arch at Auschwitz among his profile pictures. The guys who are married but looking to cheat.

The more I date, the more I lose hope. I think I need a break, a reset. A short one (I know all about opting out for too long). The stew has been too much and I need to dry off for a while.

Friday roundup

There's a cost to holding on, says Carl Richards:

There is an actual cost to holding onto things we should let go of. It can come in the form of anger, frustration, resentment or something even worse. The question is, can you really afford to keep paying the bill?

The faster we learn to drop our emotional dead weight, the more room we create for something better. I’m talking about everything from stewing about the guy who cut you off in traffic this morning to still refusing to forgive an old friend for an event 20 years ago. 

And also to abusing our power, says Ask Polly:

For example, I got into it with a troll the other day. He wasn’t remotely worth my time, but I like a good fight. Afterward, though, I felt guilty for being prideful and for smashing his face into the ground. Who even knows what that guy is going through? Who knows how lonely or angry he is, thanks to being treated without empathy his whole life, thanks to his habit of never, ever, treating himself with empathy? I abused my power. I’m a happy person who’s procrastinating. But he’s a guy who’s so unhappy that he’s looking for trouble from strangers online. I could’ve tried to reach that guy, but I didn’t help him at all.

I constantly have to remind myself to be kinder to people who are clearly insecure. The manifestations of their insecurities are, in the immediate sense, asking to be smacked down. Why should I validate their one-up-manship, for example? Because why the f* not? They clearly need it.

Rebecca Traister, brilliant as always, on weinergate part one million.

Dear lord, are we still, in 2016, fighting over shaving and make-up? FFS, you don't have to follow trends. I never have. I don't not wear make-up because it's trendy now; I won't wear make-up if it becomes trendy again. I don't wear make-up because I don't give a fuck (and yes, I have pretty good skin). I couldn't honestly tell you whether I'd be inspired, much less compelled, to wear make-up if I had lesser skin. So I don't understand how trends can "exclude," because trends are optional. Beauty standards are always exclusionary. Which is why feminism isn't about about pushing new trends or standards; it's about empowering women to do whatever the fuck they want, regardless of trends or standards.

How safe are GMOs really? Not all scientists are convinced. I personally maintain that the publicly perceived risks are overblown, but (1) agree that longterm effects have not been exhaustively tested and  (2) benefits are even more overblown, in that low-tech farming methods yield better returns to struggling farmers.

Tuesday roundup

Kids are bad for the climate and climate change is bad for kids.

I woke up to headphones trending on Twitter:

How to Approach a Girl Wearing Headphones
step 1: spend years fighting to change the culture to make interaction w/ strangers safe for women

— Juliaplo (@FickleFngrnails) August 30, 2016

how to approach women wearing headphones:

1 wave wildly
2 try to appear larger than you are
3 shout loudly at the bear
4 wait that's bears

— Nick Capozzoli (@NickCapozzoli) August 30, 2016

pic.twitter.com/p1wRGwD4iU

— Elite Bear Agents (@Bearpigman) August 30, 2016

This is the best response to the provoking article.

By step 4 I’ve learnt that you can’t understand a basic body language brush-off and are therefore a direct threat to my personal safety. My brain is in fight or flight, checking for escape routes, it’s trying to figure out just how aggressively you’re going to react to any further action I take to extract myself from a situation entirely not of my own making and it is praying they use a flattering photo of me on the news, not that one when my front-facing camera went off accidentally that time.

That's largely in response to what can be summed up by this:

Women love to test guys to see how confident they really are and a favorite test of women is to ignore a guy’s attempts to converse with her and see what he will do next. Will he walk away in shame, or will he remain calm and continue talking to her in a confident, easy-going manner?

Um, no. Fuck no.

***
On the topic of yesterday's post, in which I excerpted a response to the "women drink because the patriarchy" article, which noted the fact that it's hard to separate what's ours from what's socially imprinted: the author noted, as an example, that she prefers her legs hairless. Is that because of the patriarchy? Who knows.

I have spent a lot of money lasering my legs to the point of hairlessness, and I'm fairly confident that it's not because of the patriarchy (though--I take her point--who knows). So today I was pinged by this dude on OKC, and what I love about OKC is that there are questions--questions that allow you to instantly disqualify troglodytes or others who are full-out unacceptable. So this dude had asserted in his answer to a question that, yes, women do have "an obligation" to keep their legs shaved. Bye. Bye and fuck you. My preference for hairless legs does not make your notion that women are obligated to do anything regarding their appearance, less revolting. You can have a preference; you may prefer women with hairless legs. That does not translate to an obligation. Bye and fuck you.

Monday roundup

Has Saudi Arabia really wrought all that it is accused of having wrought?

Is China censoring Canadian citizens/residents? Wait, Canada can’t/won't protect its citizens from harassment by agents of a foreign government??

So someone sent me the original trending article, and my response was very similar to this:

Perhaps it’s because I’ve never had a drug or alcohol problem, but for me, drinking with other women isn’t just coping or complacency. 

But I also appreciated this:

Like most women who call themselves feminists, I know that living in a sexist world shapes my life and choices. It’s probably why I feel “cleaner” with shaved legs and like to wear bright lipstick. In one specific instance, I’m pretty sure it’s why I was denied a promotion. In most cases, though, when it comes to decisions I make, it’s difficult to separate what is and isn’t related to the patriarchy. Do I feel more powerful with short hair because of the patriarchy? Do I pick my cuticles when I get nervous because of the patriarchy? Do I have a distant relationship with my mom because of the patriarchy? Did I get drunk last night because of the patriarchy? Who knows.

As I've previously stated, I don't have long hair because of the patriarchy; I have long hair because it's the only way my hair works. It's less work when it's long. But this also evokes the strong-is-the-new-skinny debate. I'm the first to argue that even skinny isn't about the patriarchy; women prefer skinny for themselves and not for men. Oh, first, an aside:

Every woman should feel free to hit the beach. I have mixed feelings about the speedo ban (satirical or otherwise) because at heart, body-shaming is always wrong. But the double-standard is palpable: if men feel free to hit the beach in their doughy states, so should women.

I found the backlash to the idiot who hated on the gymnastics team's abs refreshing but also fascinating. He has every right to not find the gymnasts' abs attractive--we all have things we find attractive or not--but his sin was presuming that those abs were their for his consumption. If you consider the reactions to the original picture, they're along the lines of "goals" and "wow" (and wow indeed); they're not about impressing dudes, as this woman astutely points out:

They're the best gymnasts in the world. I promise you, they didn't get those abs to impress your dusty ass. https://t.co/LK05pdB0U8

— Crystal. (@blackandbougie) August 23, 2016

And that is the key point: these are our abs; bless you if you find them attractive, but they sure as hell aren't about you either way.

And that's how I feel about strength/muscle tone: you can like it or not, but it's not for you. So--even if we accepted the premise that skinny was a thing of the patriarchy, and I don't--strong is even less so. Strong is for us, and if dudes want to admire it that's their call. But it's not about them--and it sends a message that it's not about them.

On dating

I didn't include Jess Zimmerman's piece on "high-maintenance" women in my roundup because I figured dating issues deserved their own post. It meshes with other articles I've linked to and discussed--on the Cool Girl, the Chill Girl, etc. An excerpt:

For a woman who has learned to make herself physically and emotionally small, to live literally and figuratively on scraps, admitting that you have an appetite is a source of cavernous fear. Women are often on a diet of the body, but we are always on a diet of the heart.The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding.

Pair with this insightful Ask Polly response:

So stop asking for water and then pretending it’s wine. Ask for wine. And if your wine tastes like water, send that shit back! Don’t pretend that you didn’t want wine in the first place. DON’T FUCK THE DUDE WITH THE WATER AND THEN TELL HIM ALL YOUR SECRETS.

Ask for wine. Don’t be embarrassed that you want wine. Just say “I am someone who drinks wine now. Nothing else will do. It’s okay if you can’t give it to me. I will find someone who will, or I will make it myself. I am good and strong and I can do lots of things. I am beautiful and broken and I deserve this.”

Thursday roundup

Neil DeGrasse Tyson on sciencing while black.

It's very technically true that more white people are killed by police, but that doesn't take into consideration population and other complicating factors.

The We Are the Left letter is everything. And Sanders holdouts didn't get it then and don't get it now.

OMG this cover:

The @NYDailyNews has a hard time waiting until Friday. #Trump cc: @pinkfloyd pic.twitter.com/EZhRKNWdYt

— David Beard (@dabeard) July 14, 2016

How much power do the Chinese people have?

How will the Iran agreement be verified?

You can be well or poorly nourished whether you're a vegan or omnivore.

Food waste is unconscionable.

Drown out the haters this weekend: go see Ghostbusters.

I've thankfully never experienced "coercive control" in a romantic relationship (I have experienced textbook passive agressiveness), but mom was always a master of coercive control.

I have experienced breadcrumbing. Unintentional, irl breadcrumbing.

Carolyn Hax on matism and again on choosing happiness.

Have you experienced any of these feelings for which you didn't know the words?

On whether intentions matter

In my last post I talked about coming to terms with mom's overbearingness and having to prioritize my own sanity over her feelings. I've become a huge proponent in prioritizing one's own needs--safety, sanity, etc.--over the feelings of others, and nowhere is this more of an issue than in interacting with dudes. In the roundup, I linked to a Carolyn column about abuse/control creep--about confronting controlling behaviors immediately (also known as setting boundaries). Abusive or controlling people will often audition borderline behaviors to test your response. Borderline behaviors offer them plausible deniability: if called out, they can fall back on how they had no idea they were being inappropriate. If not called out, they keep going. Sometimes they really do have no idea they're being inappropriate, which brings us back to the issue of whether intentions matter. When your safety and sanity are at stake, they don't.

Thought experiment

Here's a twist on my thought experiment from last week: when is it worth putting up with someone's logistical shortcomings that are no fault of his own? The practical consequences of the shortcomings remain--you're still stuck putting in extra work and cleaning up the mess--but there's, say, a medical excuse. Thus far this question has been an academic one for me; logistical issues were hardly the only thing keeping me from the men I've dated who suffered from them. But would logistical issues be enough to sink an otherwise worthwhile relationship? And does it matter if those issues are not the person's fault?

An aside: I came downstairs the other morning to have to clean up a bunch of cat poop and cat vomit. The former pissed me off more, because it was deliberate and gratuitous, even though it was very easy to clean up. I thought 'this has got to stop.' I want the vomit to stop, too--that's a huge pain to clean up--and Gracie's on prescription boring food for now. I'd never consider abandoning an animal because she's sick, but for a split-second, the poop made me angry enough to wonder whether it was worth keeping her around. But this isn't about Gracie, whom I'm definitely going to keep, as much as she angers me sometimes. This is about an incredibly weird date I went on the other night.

I went out with this dude the other night who is (allegedly) dyslexic. He was so strange and his dyslexia was so exaggerated that I wondered whether he was making it up to hide something. He implied that he was a native English speaker in spite of his accent-- he told me he'd gotten his accent from the teachers in the international schools all over the world--but I know how accents work; I have studied linguistics and foreign language acquisition academically, and that is not how accents work. So I had to wonder whether the dyslexia, which he mentioned repeatedly, was a deception measure to explain away any indications of his not being a native English speaker.

I'll spare you most of the details and share only the weirdest ones. I'd already regretted agreeing to meet this man the day before our date, but thought how bad could it be. He sent me this super-douchey text, and at the time it didn't register quite how douchey it was (I was walking). He'd asked what I was doing later, and I said I was looking forward to getting back to my book.

Dude: What book? 

Me: 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami). Do you know it? 

Dude: I am; but have not read it yet 

Dude (5 minutes later): I do study Quantum theoretical physics and Chaos/string critical mass and events. It's fun once you learn how to roll with it :)

WTF? At the time, I thought, that's not what the book is about at all (maybe I wasn't far enough in, but now I am, and his comment is neither here nor there). More importantly, that doesn't impress me. I'm Russian; assholes who are good at math are a dime a dozen in my world. But that text--douchiness/condescension apart--doesn't even make sense. "Chaos/string critical mass and events" is not a thing. Even if you try to parse it, none of it makes sense. I'm pretty sure that string theory is very widely discredited at this point, and if he "studied" it, he would know that.  

He texted me the day we were to meet up to ask if I'd like to have dinner as well as going for a walk. I emphatically did not. First of all, I hate dinner dates (early on). You could be sitting across from someone for a very long time with nothing to talk about. It's so much less awkward to be doing something (like walking). I didn't tell him that, though; I told him something else that was true: my week was full of restaurant get-togethers, and I didn't want to add another one. I was getting restauranted-out. I added that, if he wanted to, we could meet later so he'd have time to eat first. But he showed up even earlier than we'd agreed.

Things were already weird--I already wanted to escape--by the time this next thing happened.

Dude: You said you liked Vietnamese food. Are there any Vietnamese restaurants around here?
A.: There's one just up the street.
Dude: You don't say! What would you say if we went there?
A.: Um... I mean, I won't be eating, but if you're very hungry you could get some takeout.
Dude: Okay, then. Lead the way. I didn't really understand what you said about being restauranted out.
[I reiterated what I'd said about being restauranted out.]
Dude: Oh. So what do you do when you're restauranted out like that?
A.: I make my own food [like a normal person. What the fuck do you think I do?]

This really reminded me of RM.

So we go to the restaurant, and instead of ordering takeout, he sits down. In retrospect, I should have said "if this is what we're doing, I'm leaving." But I didn't.

He asks me if there's anything vegetarian on the menu. I point out that there is.

Dude: But it says 'chicken.'
A.: That's fake chicken.

Eventually, his food comes.

Dude: This looks like real chicken.
A.: It is real chicken.
Dude: You said it was fake chicken.
A.: No, [asshole,] I said there was fake chicken on the menu.

Dude: This is so much food. I didn't realize it would come with noodles.

It was under the 'vermicelli' category of the menu.

This conversation was infuriating, but how much shit could I give him for it if he was legitimately dyslexic? I don't know. But I do know that it didn't mitigate the annoyingness of the situation. I knew that even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't date a man who didn't pay attention to details--even if he had dyslexia to blame for it.

Luckily, I was so livid and creeped out by the whole situation that the cause of his other issue was moot; finding myself in a restaurant with him even though that's exactly where I didn't want to be, after I'd made that clear, was a 'Gift of Fear' scenario. He finished eating, we walked back to where he was parked, and I got the f* away from him.

Thursday ramble

I was thinking more about (emotional) safety. The first time I heard the word 'safety' used in that sense was at a professional training session on managing conflict. It pertained to the first step in having a difficult conversation: make it safe. It made intuitive sense, but it's hard to pinpoint what safe means in that context. In my last ramble, it meant going into a conversation trusting that you'd be listened to and heard--that you wouldn't be judged and that your words wouldn't be used against you.

Saturday roundup and ramble

Georgetown sold slaves.

Alzheimer's is awful.

I don't agree with everything in either of these but I appreciate the nuance and appreciation for complexity in policy.

Russian immigrants understandably want nothing to do with socialism, but I have more trouble understanding how Trump could appeal to them.

People are still in denial about meat and climate change.

On fracking.

Introverts aren't less social; we just can't handle small talk and other bullshit.

The office isn't the only place where women are expected to supply free labor.

I sort of agree with this:

Because men too lazy to make the first move don’t buy flowers. They don’t plan picnics. They don’t remember anniversaries.

Then again, I'm single (and then again again, I'm not stuck with a lazy dude).

Friday evening roundup (brought to you by food poisoning and spring cleanup)

Don't let the meat industry convince you that you need meat.

Good for the U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic for being out and proud and inspirational.

God forbid women have ambition, exist, or act on what's attractive to them:

of all the awful things i've read on the internet, "women are the hitlers of sex" might be my favorite pic.twitter.com/0jgJY4EoYi

— stay at home cat mom (@Coruscating) April 3, 2016

Making abortion inaccessible only tortures women.

An excellent explanation of why veganism is consistent with choice:

That organic compound within the womb takes a long time to develop consciousness – and thus to hold sentience. But the woman, whose womb it is, is conscious the whole time. If she is suffering, or being tortured by carrying a baby she doesn’t want – or worse still, doesn’t want the pain or suffering of child birth – then that is something we should take seriously. And given that we have the medical knowledge to help get those cells out of her, we err greatly by denying her the right to do so. There’s no difference between a foetus in the earlier stages and semen, in rational terms. Cells are cells. So we should be pro-choice in abortion for the same reasons we are pro-choice about whether men want to carry ejaculated semen around in their pocket all day.

Dr. Nerdlove on boundaries and how toxic people abuse the social contract to erode them. So much RM in there.

Bilingual toddlers are smarter.

Lessons learned or reinforced from the amicable end of a relationship

Had I had time to blog earlier this week, this post would have been about how I inadvertently broke up with someone on the platform at L'Enfant Plaza. I wasn't exactly sure what had happened--we parted awkwardly, but there were awkward circumstances: his running late, my being mindful of his running late, and our holding our respective pizza boxes. It was early days--a few months in--and I was enjoying seeing him but had various doubts about our long-term compatibility. I liked this guy--we had an intellectual and an emotional connection--and enjoyed spending time with him, but there were a few too many 'buts' that I couldn't shake. I was willing to keep going out while things were fun, healthy, and respectful. Which meant, in part, that he was taking initiative, being communicative, and treating me well. I'd started to notice slippage in the first two--one thing I really appreciated about him was that, unlike almost everyone else I'd ever dated, he never tried to fuck with my head. There was no passive-aggressiveness, emotional manipulation, blame, or other horseshit. But maturity, communication skills, and respect are prerequisites for a healthy relationship, not the only things you need for one. But I digress.

Wednesday roundup

Nicaragua is reliving the 80s, albeit less violently.

Signs of heroin addiction, coming to a public place near you.

I'm late to post this, but the Times has some words for Chris Christie.

I really feel for this obese person and her anxiety about flying, and wish it on no one and blame it on no one, but would hate to be in the next seat over.

The less we know, the more confident we are.


Two great takes on aggressive atheism run amok.

Listen to this man who learned the hard way: don't kill your relationship by being a child.

"Mad Max" and toxic masculinity.

We women of a certain age see condescension for what it is, and when you're trying to put us in what you think is our place.

Nancy Reagan refused to be invisible.

Women can now afford to be after more than a warm body.

I know I once rolled my eyes at RM for having a picture of his smug self rather than his family on his computer desktop, but that was his desktop, not social media. These parents are judging you for not Facebooking about your kids like they're the only thing going on in your life.

I support the bird-bath movement.

This is what my emails really mean.

This story about a penguin who visits his rescuer warmed even my iced-over heart.