Sara Eckel's Blog, page 10

Portrait of a Failed Pickup (and a Postscript)

I recently received a letter from a man named Mark, who asked for advice on giving women compliments. He had met a nice woman at an art galley and they chatted for about half an hour. Mark was normally shy and reserved with women, but a female friend had told him he needed to be more assertive. Hoping to be a little flirty, he told the woman she had “a really nice hourglass figure.”

She was not impressed, asking him why he would say something so inappropriate to someone he barely knew. “I went into damage control mode, but only made things worse,” said Mark

The conversation ended when she slapped him. Stunned, Mark apologized and left. “While I was quite embarrassed, I actually felt worse for her since I obviously offended her,” he said.

Mark wanted to know what I thought. Had he been too provocative for a first encounter? Would it be OK if he sent the woman an email to apologize (she had given him her business card before things went south)?

I felt for the guy. Even though I did think his comment was inappropriate, his letter made clear that he didn’t mean to be disrespectful. So I wrote back explaining something that might seem fairly obvious to the average woman, but clearly isn’t to all men (or at least not to the nicer ones) — that sometimes when a man is chatting up a woman he just met, he is only interested in her body parts. He isn’t interested in getting to know her or possibly starting a meaningful relationship — he just wants to get her back to his place, or hers. Mark’s comment left the impression that he was only interested in a physical relationship. Hence, the slap.

I said I thought it was fine if he wanted to write her to apologize, but advised him to keep it short and not to ask her out. I thought he needed to make clear that his apology was sincere and that he wasn’t angling for a date.

The next day Mark wrote me with good news: The woman accepted his apology and suggested they meet for coffee. He was elated.

In her note, the woman explained: “I like to be appreciated for who I am, what I do and not how well I can fill out a skirt.” However, she was impressed by his gentlemanly behavior after the fact. He apologized and left the gallery after she slapped him. He sent her a sincere note saying he was sorry. Plus, she had enjoyed their conversation before he commented on her curves.

I love this story. So often we have an awkward encounter with the opposite sex and it becomes nothing but fodder for a larger argument about why “men are pigs” or “women are impossible.” We swap stories with our friends and roll our eyes at the crazy behavior, bemoaning the fact that we are reduced to dealing with these poor excuses for humanity.

But scratch the surface and what do you get — a shy, socially awkward guy who just wanted to let a woman know he thought she was pretty, a wary woman who valued her dignity but also knew how to recognize that there could be a good man beneath the blunder. Most important, you get two people who weren’t afraid to be wrong. This alone speaks very well for their dating futures, regardless of whether they become a couple.

We can’t all be pick-up artists. Not everyone has a way with a perfectly timed joke or a smooth remark. Not everyone has the kind of great looks that compel strangers to walk across rooms and start conversations.

But we can all be decent human beings. We can all be sincere, respectful, compassionate and open-minded. We’re all capable of forgiving another person and of admitting when we screwed up.

And that’s great news, since these are also the qualities that matter most.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.





This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

 

Getting Over Single ‘Shame’

After being unattached for 11 years, Sue had just started dating someone who had a lot of relationship experience, and she was embarrassed by her thin relationship resume. “How do I let go my feelings of inadequacy?” she asked author Sasha Cagen and I in a recent webcast.

Sue had a classic case of single shame, something Cagen and I understood well. I was single for most of my twenties and thirties, and always hedged when asked the dreaded question, “How long has it been since your last relationship?” Cagen, the author of Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics, recalls the time she told a man that her longest relationship had been nine months.

“It took me about half an hour to get it out. It was this crazy, painful thing,” Cagen said.

If you’ve been single for longer than you care to admit, it’s natural to wonder why or even ask, “What’s wrong with me?” This question is particularly common in our can-do culture, which leaves little room for luck, chance or circumstance. If your life isn’t working out quite the way you’d like — be it with work, finances or romance- – then the most common assumption is that the problem can be reduced to one factor: you.

That’s where the shame part comes in. You see that so many other people manage to have long-term relationships — if not for forever, then at least for a while. What do they know that you don’t? Are you missing the essential quality that makes a person able to get past the fifth date?

When I was reporting my book, It’s Not You, I spoke with many people who had married after spending years, or even decades, on their own. My friend Marcella had a nine-year dry spell before she met her husband George at age 38. They’ve now been married for four years and have a daughter.

Has it been a struggle? Did Marcella’s lack of relationship experience put her out of her depth? No. Like many other former long-term singles I interviewed, Marcella has been pleasantly surprised by how adept she is at navigating the ins and outs of marriage. “Who would have thought I’d ever feel like this after seeing myself as the bottom of the barrel for so long?” she said.

Even when Marcella was a single person struggling with low self-esteem, she still had all the qualities she needed to maintain a healthy, adult relationship: maturity, kindness, and intelligence. For her and many other former singletons, that’s really all it takes.

Sure, we can learn from relationships. There is value in the struggle to connect two souls even when it’s difficult, even when it ultimately doesn’t work. But that is not the only path to relationship wisdom.

We all have our strengths and vulnerabilities. We all possess intelligence and we all have glaring gaps of ignorance. Nobody has the market cornered on insight into the human condition. To a certain extent, we’re all stumbling in the dark.

For her part, Cagen realized that she was her own harshest judge. When she told her friend about her scant relationship experience, he shrugged. “He looked at me like ‘why are you worried?’” she said.

Instead of asking yourself, “What’s wrong with me?” try asking, “What’s right with me?” Instead of wondering why you haven’t struggled through a string of doomed relationships, why not be glad that you have the wisdom and strength to wait for the right one?

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

Think You Know How to Flirt? New Research Says You Don’t

You thought you were being so obvious with your jokey comments and playful arm-punches. After all, you don’t brush lint off anyone’s jacket. You don’t gently teaseeveryone when they take an extra-large helping of mashed potatoes.

We flirt with the people we think are cute and might want to date. And yet, so often, the recipients of our overtures seem oblivious. And so, with heavy hearts, we back off, assuming the objects of our affection aren’t interested.

But wait — there could be another reason. It’s very possible that the other person simply isn’t picking up on those signals.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Kansas found that most people are terrible at flirting. We don’t know how to convey interest, and we are incredibly obtuse when it comes to reading other people’s signs — or at least the positive ones.

“If you think someone is not interested in you, you are probably right, they are not interested. But if someone is, you probably missed it,” said Jeffrey Hall, an associate professor of communication studies at KU and author of the 2013 book The Five Flirting Styles.

In the first experiment, 52 pairs of single, heterosexual college students were told they were participating in a study on first impressions. The students talked for 10 to 12 minutes and later completed questionnaires in separate rooms. Along with many other questions, students were asked if they flirted and if they thought their partner had flirted.

In 80% of the cases, participants correctly noted that their counterpart had not flirted with them. However, only 36% of men and 18% of women were aware when their partner was flirting. In one heartbreaking case, both the man and the woman in the pair flirted with each other, but didn’t think the other one was flirting back. Hall explains:

Behavior that is flirtatious is hard to see, and there are several reasons for that. People aren’t going to do it in obvious ways because they don’t want to be embarrassed, flirting looks a lot like being friendly, and we are not accustomed to having our flirting validated so we can get better at seeing it.

And if you think bringing a wingman will help your game, think again. In another study, 250 participants watched short video clips of the pairs in the first experiment, seeing each person one at a time, and were asked if they were flirting. The group was only able to successfully identify flirting 38% of the time.

The least accurate predictions came from women watching men, who were only able to pick up on the guys’ overtures 22% the time.

Hall said that it wasn’t that the men had greater intuition, but the women were more clear about their intentions.

So if you like someone, don’t assume they aren’t interested just because they didn’t pluck a stray eyelash off your cheek. And don’t rely on light arm touches and wry humor to convey your intentions. Sometimes, the only way to know another person’s feelings is to tell them yours.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her onTwitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

 

Hot or Not? The Answer May Change With Time

Lose weight. Whiten your teeth. Work those abs. Cover your gray. And for goodness sake, put on a little lipstick! When you’re dating, the pressure to measure up to the beauty standard prescribed by magazines, advertisements and celebrity info-tainment programs can feel pretty relentless. Sure, we all want to look our best, and there is a lot to be said for making an effort. Taking the time to iron your dress or tuck in your shirt is a gesture of courtesy and respect to yourself and others. But at a certain point, you have to look in the mirror and say, “This is what I’ve got, folks. Take it or leave it.” Because no matter how much time and money you devote to exercise, hair care and clothes shopping, you’re still left looking pretty much like… you. We all venture into the dating world hoping that others will appreciate our charms, even if our noses are crooked or our bellies spill over our belts. And the good news is they will — but it may take some time. Paul Eastwick and Lucy Hunt of the University of Texas at Austin surveyed heterosexual students in a college class about the attractiveness of their opposite-sex classmates, asking them to state how strongly they agreed with statements like “members of the opposite sex are attracted to [name].” They were also asked to imagine their classmates as romantic partners and evaluate such statements as “[name] fulfills me in ways that other partners could not.” At the beginning of the semester, there was a lot of agreement about who was hot and who was not. But three months later, that had changed. As the students got to know one another, they became more aware of each other’s unique qualities — the kind of stuff we don’t always agree on like bookishness (“smart and interesting” to me might be “stuffy and dull” to you) and boisterousness (one women’s fun party guy might be another’s annoying loud jock). By the end of the semester, the students no longer agreed on who was the most attractive but instead admired classmates with the unique qualities that most appealed to them personally. In another study, Eastwick and Hunt asked people who were in the same friend network to evaluate their long-term pals’ attractiveness. Again they discovered that after people get to know one another, there is no agreement on the relative cuteness of the opposite sex. In a New York Times opinion piece, the researchers said:

Among these well-acquainted individuals, consensus on measures of mate value was nearly zero. These are the people who know what authors you like, what you wore for Halloween six years ago and what obscure movie you will quote the next time you all get together. But they cannot agree on your mate value. Over the years, it has evaporated before their eyes.

So if you’ve noticed that your tall, thin, symmetrically featured friends get more attention at cocktail parties, that’s probably because they are. But fortunately, their advantage fades over time. If you can find ways to gradually get acquainted with potential partners — through clubs, book groups, adult-ed classes, volunteer work, networks of friends — the beautiful people will have nothing on you.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

 

“Being Single at Weddings” essay in The Boston Globe Magazine

I have an essay about going to weddings without a date in this weekend’s Boston Globe Magazine.

As a wedding guest, I set myself to single-woman cruise control. You can’t let a wedding get to you — you have to glide through in a swingy dress and newly retouched highlights; you need to be prepared with tales of your exciting career and happy-slappy dating antics.

But during the ceremony, safely tucked in the adoring crowd, I allowed more complicated emotions in. I watched very hard as the misty-eyed couple gazed at each other with that intoxicating mix of overwhelming emotion and utter certainty. Yes, the rest of our life: Let’s go.

These two people knew love, understood its vast and unwieldy intricacies. And as I’d watch the groom’s lip quiver and the bride smile reassuringly back, I was ashamed of the black cloud gathering in my heart. These were citizens of a universe I had no access to. They possessed some invisible ability, or quality, that could never be learned or even really articulated. Meanwhile, I was part of the unenlightened single-and-searching masses, shuffling in sweat pants or — worse, maybe — sashaying in dresses cut a little too low, with lipstick a little too bright.

To read the rest, click here.

Reading at the Hartford Public Library

I’m looking forward to my reading at the Hartford Public Library. If you’re in town, please stop by!

He’s Hot. He’s Cold. He’s Hot Again.

At first, things were amazing — dates that lasted fourteen hours, a constant string of flirty emails and texts. You discussed what your kids would look like and whether or not you’d both be happy living in Albuquerque. The dude was seriously into you. Until he wasn’t. Suddenly communication ceased. He was “busy with work” or “had a lot of stuff going on” or, worse, offered nothing but radio silence.

So you did what you had to do. You cried. You complained to your friends. You binged-watched Orange Is The New Black and reminded yourself that at least you’re not in a minimum-security prison for a youthful indiscretion you committed ten years ago. And after some time, you started to feel better and even began wondering what you ever saw in that jerk.

And then it comes: The ping ping of your phone: “Sorry I disappeared. Work was crazy. What are you up to tonight?” What you are up to is Season Four of Mad Men. At first, you’re elated. Work was crazy! That explains it all! And you very much want to dash over to his place for an evening of take-out Thai food and kissing on the couch.

But something holds you back. You think of that annoying friend who’s always scolding you and quoting relationship self-help books that say that you have be an ice queen to get guys to like you. You have many arguments for this friend. First, you’re not some twit who slavishly follows dating guides. You’re a modern, independent woman who does whatever she wants. You don’t believe in manipulating men to get them to like you; you believe in being real.

On the other hand, dropping everything to see this guy doesn’t feel quite right either. So what to do: Should you stay or should you go?

I’ve been hearing a version of this question a lot lately, and it fascinates me because I have two completely different responses. First, there’s what I used to do in this situation—more often that not, I went. Because life is short, and because I wanted to.

And yet, now when people ask me about the exact same dilemma, I always want to say DO NOT GO.

So what’s my deal? Have I become the smug-married enemy?

I still hate it when dating guides tell women that men will like them better if they’re aloof or withholding. Any guy who needs you to act like a bitch in order to be interested isn’t worth having, in my mind.

But I don’t think politely declining this kind of invitation is being manipulative. Actually, I think it’s the more honest response. This person was careless with your feelings; he hurt you. Pretending it’s no big deal is just as dishonest as pretending you’re not interested.

I’m not suggesting you unload about how unhappy you’ve been for the past two weeks. I’m suggesting you set some standards for how you would like to be treated in the future: “Sorry, I’m in for the night. But I’m around next week if you want to make a plan.”

It might not work. He might move on to the next chick on his contact list. So while sure you could miss out on a night of passion, I do think you ultimately gain something more valuable: your dignity.

This is not about meeting someone else’s standard of how a young lady should behave. It’s also not about trying to get anyone to fall in love with you—people are going to feel how they feel. This is about setting your own standards based on what does and does not work for you. It’s about making the decision that you will look back on a week or a month or a year from now and think, “I’m glad I did that.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean declining. If you’ve considered the emotional pros and cons and then decide to quickly spritz your hair and re-apply some eyeliner before dashing out of the house, good for you. Pretty much everyone who is alive has been there, and sometimes you just need to say, hell yeah.

If you later regret that decision, don’t stress it. Life is an ongoing experiment; we’re continually gathering data about what does and does not make us happy. The important thing is not how this other person responds (even though it of course seems very important in the moment) it’s what the experience teaches you about how you want to live your life, and the type of person you want to share it with.

This post originally appeared on eHarmony.com.

The Reveal: When Do You Tell Your Date … That Thing?

At a bookstore cafe in Boston, a woman in the audience had a question for me, the evening’s designated dating guru. There was something she didn’t want the men she dated to know about her. How long should she hide it?

I sat on a high stool in front of the room, microphone in hand, blinking. My book, It’s Not You, isn’t a dating guide per say, but it’s about being single and it’s very personal, so I often find myself in advice-lady mode. It’s something I’m still getting used to.

“Something you don’t want them to know?” I said, stalling.

“I’m a vegan,” she said.

I must have looked confused, so she explained. She was also a conservative Christian. She didn’t want men getting the wrong impression when she ordered tofu and quinoa.

Isn’t it funny? Our own secrets are so deep and dark. Other people’s are adorable.

But regardless of whether the issue is a dietary restriction or a criminal record, the question of when to share delicate information looms large for many daters, says Daniel Jones, the editor of The New York Times Modern Love column.

During the ten years Jones has edited the column, he has read many submissions from people fretting about when to do “the reveal.” When do you tell the person you’re dating that you’re a recovering alcoholic or that you recently filed for bankruptcy? When is exactly the right time to mention you have a 2-year-old daughter who lives with her mother in another state?

“We all have failings and insecurities—physical and emotional scars, divorces, STDs, cancer—that we’re trying to hide or at least de-emphasize early in the relationship. I’ve heard from chemotherapy patients who have agonized over the ‘wig reveal’ and from someone with a disfiguring leg disease who agonized over her ‘pants reveal,’” Jones writes in his delightful and wise new book Love Illuminated: Exploring Life’s Most Mystifying Subject (with the Help of 50,000 Strangers).

He also heard from me. A few years ago, I submitted an essay about my sparse dating history, and the embarrassment I felt when I confessed that I had spent most of my 20s and 30s unattached. After the column was published, I heard from people around the world who also struggled with the shame of longtime singlehood.

We all have our stuff. But many of us are also our own harshest critics. And as I contemplated my vegan friend’s question, I figured out what was bugging me—the word “hide.”

If she didn’t want to get into the details of her diet, there was nothing wrong with that. We aren’t obligated to provide a complete medical/psychological/financial/romantic history at the first coffee meet-up, or even the fifth or sixth romantic dinner.

But there’s a difference between hiding information and simply keeping it private. Hiding is an act of shame; keeping something private is an act of self-respect.

The person you’re meeting for margaritas isn’t entitled to all your most sensitive information now or maybe ever. Sure, of course, when and if the relationship gets serious you’ll want to let this person know that you have diabetes or were once a member of a religious cult.

When do you do that? Jones can’t say, and neither can I. You do it when you think it is time, or maybe a little before. Of course it will be scary. Love is scary; that’s the deal.

“Vulnerability is what love is all about,” writes Jones. “And vulnerability involves yielding control, revealing weakness, embracing imperfection and opening ourselves to the possibility of loss. Only when we open ourselves to the possibility of loss can we allow for the possibility of love.”

For my part, I waited a month before telling a cute copyeditor named Mark that I hadn’t had a boyfriend for eight years. His response: “Lucky for me. All those other guys were idiots.” That was eight years ago. We’ve been together ever since.

This post originally appeared on eHarmony.com.

Thanks KCRW! And, hi, Los Angeles!

It was a treat to be interviewed by Madeleine Brand on KCRW in Los Angeles yesterday. We talked about The Princeton Mom, fake marriage crises and the many other ways the culture makes single women feel lousy–and ignores all the good news.

I’ll be reading at Book Soup in LA on Friday May 23 (tomorrow!) at 7:30, with an after-party at State Social House.

Madeleine Brand on KCRW in Los Angeles [at 12:27] :

Reading and party in Los Angeles

Dear LA friends,

Singular City is hosting a reading and book party for me at Book Soup on Friday, May 23 at 7:30 pm. 8818 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90069,

Afterwards, we’ll head one block east to State Social House for cocktails and snacks–8782 Sunset Blvd.

You can find details here.

Hope to see you!

Sara