I'm new to online dating. I'm a nice, good-looking guy with a good job, but I have a muscular condition that causes me to shake a lot. I'm not looking to fool anyone, but I don't want to advertise my condition on my profile because it's so personal. My last date was several months ago, and it ended with her saying I was "creepy" because of my disability -- a condition I was born with.
--Bummed
Apparently, this last woman you dated is so used to wearing her heart on her sleeve that she failed to notice that most of it broke off (and is maybe still lying there with her driver's-side mirror at the Burger King drive-thru).
The thing is, even women who might be open to dating a guy with a bit of a wiggle are likely to be miffed at having it withheld from them until the first date. They'd probably feel similarly if they were surprised by your actual height, weight, or species. In other words, the underlying issue is the lack of disclosure, not the lack of sit-still-ness -- which doesn't justify for a second what this woman said to you. (Clearly, her disability -- being a compassionless bitch -- is just less visible than yours.)
However, I'm not going to kumbaya you. Advertising yourself as "tall, dark, and shaky" wouldn't be ideal. Even revealing it on the phone could lead to some painful date cancellations. But, as for your notion that your condition is "so personal," a spastic colon is personal; a woman won't know about yours unless it's in such an advanced state that it cuts into conversation to correct her grammar. Your tremors, however, become public the moment you walk into a place to meet a woman -- which is actually the perfect time to make a crack like, "Is it freezing in here, or do I have a muscular disorder?" Maybe while wearing a T-shirt with "That's my groove thing I'm shaking."
How dare I joke about a disability?! Truth be told, I can't really take credit for this approach. I call it "The Callahan," after my late quadriplegic cartoonist friend, John Callahan, who buzzed around Portland in a motorized wheelchair, cracking jokes like, "See my new shoes? I hear they're very comfortable."
Callahan understood that a person's disability often becomes a big wall between them and the rest of us because we're afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing. But through his refusal to, uh, pussychair around the subject, Callahan told people how the disabled want to be treated, which is "just like everyone else." And because the rest of us get poked fun of, Callahan did cartoons featuring disabled people. One of these has a posse on horseback in the desert looking down at an empty wheelchair. The posse leader reassures the others, "Don't worry, he won't get far on foot" -- which became the title of Callahan's autobiography.
Adopting a more Callahan-esque attitude -- using humor -- would allow you to set the tone for your condition to be just a fact about you instead of a fact people pity you for. And by offering to answer questions they might have, you can shrink any big scary mysteries down to a more manageable size. For example: How permanent is your condition? Will it get worse? If we make babies together, what are the chances they'll be vibrating in their crib?
And, no, I'm not going to tell you what 35 readers will write to tell me after this column comes out -- that you should go on a dating site for people with disabilities. What I will tell you is that online dating isn't an ideal venue for everyone. Plenty of non-disabled people find it brutal.
But there's good news for you from some research by evolutionary psychologists Kevin Kniffin and David Sloan Wilson. On day one of a six-week archeological dig, they had students give their first impressions of the smarts, likability, and physical attractiveness of their new classmates. On the last day, the students re-rated one another. Well, it seems that physical attractiveness can be heavily influenced by personality and character. For example, a woman whose looks initially rated a measly 3.25 (out of 9) became a hardworking, popular member of the group. By the end of the course, her hotitude in other students' eyes shot up to a 7.
In other words, if, beyond that shaky exterior, you're a pretty great guy, you're probably better off looking for dates in Meetup.com groups and other arenas where you'll have continuing contact with women. Remember, you only need to charm that one girl -- one who is so excited to find a sweet guy who reminds her of a movie star that she doesn't mind that it happens to be Katharine Hepburn at 70.
My boyfriend has a crazy ex-wife who can't let go. She is the meanest, most vengeful and manipulative person, initially convincing the 15-year-old son she has with my boyfriend that I'm the reason "Dad won't come back." (He actually divorced her after she, in a fit of rage, made a false police report about him.) She also slashed my tires and spread a rumor that my boyfriend is a child molester. I love him dearly, and we feel we're soul mates, but his ex-wife is making it so hard to be happy. What can I do?
--Besieged
Where is the very small, highly targeted zombie apocalypse when you need it?
Don't take this woman's behavior personally. And yes, I'm serious. Assuming what you say about her is true, she seems to be one of those born bar brawlers, ever on the lookout for a reason to break a bottle over someone's head and start the second Hundred Years' War. If she could, she'd not only slash your tires but take a sponge bath in the Fountain of Youth so she could live long enough to slash your great-great-grandchildren's, too.
The problem is, because she isn't acting from anything resembling reason, there's no reasoning with her. As personal security expert Gavin de Becker says about the irrationally persistent in his terrific book "The Gift of Fear," "There is no straight talk for crooked people." So, practically speaking, short of finding a home security company that sends out zombie squads by radio call, all that you, personally, can do is decide whether you find love and soulmatery worth the trade-offs in terror and tire costs. As for what your boyfriend can do, the answer, unfortunately, is "not much more": Install video surveillance; document everything she does; and use the legal system to the extent he can (and the extent that seems prudent).
The following advice -- to use gratitude as a buffer against ugliness -- might sound like it's from the Little Miss Sunshine Solutions Department, but there's actually solid science behind it. Research by social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and her colleagues finds that people are meaningfully happier when they take regular stock of the things they have to be grateful for. (A caveat: This happiness-increasing effect was found only for people who did this blessings counting once a week, maybe, the researchers surmise, because doing it more often felt like a chore.)
So consider getting gratitudinal once a week, maybe on Sunday night. You could even write five things down on slips of paper and put them in a "Gratitude Jar" so you have a visual reminder of how good you actually have it when things go bad. This may also help you avoid getting snippy with the irritatingly well-meaning who chirp, "What goes around comes around!" Right. If there is such a thing as karma, it seems to go after the truly heinous offenders first, like all the people who ever dropped a straw wrapper or let out a puff of tail wind in the elevator.
I'm a butch lesbian with a crush on a (supposedly) straight married lady who's very tomboyish. She has a number of lesbian friends, and I suspect her husband is in the closet. I keep telling her she's "culturally gay" (because she dresses "soft butch" -- combat boots, cords, etc. -- and because of some of her attitudes), but I actually think there's more to it than that. She insists she's straight but seems weirdly upset by my comments.
--Be Who You Are
Why not just say it right out: "There's the closet. Could you please sit in there for a half-hour and come out ready to leave your husband?"
I personally find it tragic when gay people feel they have to "ungay" themselves by living straight, but respecting another person's privacy means accepting that they get to choose which parts of their life they'll be taking commentary on. In other words, by picketing a baker who won't make a cake for a gay wedding, you're exercising your free speech rights, but it's way out of line for you to effectively picket somebody's relationship: "We're here! We're queer! And guess what: So are the two of you!" And no, this isn't justified by your creation of an updated Kinsey scale -- one that measures female homosexual desire based on a woman's choice of footwear and whether she accessorizes with a welding mask.
So, instead of trying to drag this woman (by her wallet chain) out of her marriage, turn your attention to a woman who's single and out. Respect that for your friend, Prince Charming may very well be that dude from the Disney movies, determined as you are to recast him as a soldier of fortune crossed with a lady gym teacher.
My mom left when I was young, and my former husband left me, too. Maybe because of this, I've noticed that I'm quick to assume that any man I'm seeing is ditching me. In the early stages of dating, if there's a lag in calling or texting me back, I'll lash out -- block the guy on Facebook and delete him from my phone -- only to feel stupid when I learn that his phone battery died or he was already asleep. As a relationship progresses, I still perceive relatively innocuous things as signs it's over, and I keep testing a guy's limits with demands and drama, pushing him to (finally) bail. How do I stop doing this? It's totally unconscious in the moment.
--Abandonment Issues
It's good to make an effort to see what a man's made of -- just not to the point where he's unsure of whether he's in a relationship with you or he got really drunk and enlisted in the Marines.
You seem to be turning your past -- getting ditched by those closest to you -- into prophecy. This isn't surprising. British psychoanalyst John Bowlby had a theory that our "attachment style" -- the way we relate in close relationships -- stems from how attuned and responsive our mother was to our needs for comforting when we were infants. If your mommy (or other primary caregiver) was consistently there for you during your infant freakouts, you end up "securely attached," meaning that you tend to feel that you can count on others to be there for you when you need them.
Research on adults by social psychologists Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver did find that patterns of relating to romantic partners seem to trace back to childhood attachment experiences. But attachment history isn't the whole story. Genes, temperament, childhood environment, and other factors also shape how we relate. And though research finds that securely attached children seem likely to end up securely attached grown-ups, adult shifts in attachment style are common. In other words, just because somebody's mommy was kind of an ice bucket, they aren't necessarily doomed to see every boyfriend as an ice bucket with a penis.
Unfortunately, though we have the ability to reason, we hate to wake the poor dear from its nap. As behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky pointed out, in the heat of the moment, the brain's emotion department is our "first responder," quick to hop on the drama pony. If our rational system parses the situation at all, it's usually much later (often after we've burned two or three bridges and carpet-bombed a relationship into fresh farmland).
Not going all Full Metal Jackie in the moment takes preplanning -- pledging to yourself to step back and run suspicious-seeming situations through the reason department. A technique called "cognitive reappraisal" seems to help. This involves dialing down your emotional response by changing the meaning some situation has for you. Instead of thinking "I know he's left me!" when an hour goes by without a text back, reframe his absence in a positive light. For example, "He's out getting me flowers." You don't have to know that this explanation is true. It just needs to be positive and possible. Research by psychologists Iris Mauss and James J. Gross and others finds that using this imaginative reframing not only decreases knee-jerk negative emotions but activates the prefrontal part of the brain involved in emotional control and downshifts the pounding heartbeat of stress to the thumping heartbeat of possibility.
This next bit of advice may sound lame and unbelievable (because it did to me until I read the research by psychologist Mario Mikulincer, Phillip Shaver, and others that suggests it works). It seems you can boost your sense of emotional security through mentally "priming" yourself -- like by repeatedly imagining yourself being treated lovingly by a man or a parent. You can get this security-enhancing effect just by viewing positive images -- for example, by repeatedly looking at a photo of lovers gazing into each other's eyes or a video loop of a mother cuddling her baby (as opposed to leaving it on a counter at a train station).
How secure you feel can also be transformed by whom you're with. The best partner to help you shift out of auto-panic is one who is loving and caring and has a more "secure" attachment style -- in other words, a person who doesn't leap to the conclusion that your being in the bathroom for 20 minutes means you've crawled out the window to freedom. With some consistent work and the right guy, you could someday get to the point where absence really does make your heart "grow fonder" -- instead of making it get out a tiny hammer and wood strips to construct an itsy-bitsy coffin for your relationship.
I've been seeing this guy long distance. I haven't really been feeling it and kind of let it drop off, thinking he'd get the hint. He keeps texting and calling. I keep telling him I'm just really busy. The truth is I've met somebody else. Do I have to tell him?
--Dreading It
Even milk and meat have the courtesy to let you know when they're expiring. You, on the other hand, reeled in a guy's heart, watched it flop around on the carpet, and then misplaced it under a pile of old newspapers.
"Life is short!" you hear people say. And it can be -- if you're in the habit of Snapchatting while meandering across bus lanes. But as the Stoic philosopher Seneca said, "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it." Unfortunately, other people sometimes waste it for us, like by expecting us to "get the hint" that they're done with us. By the way, men, especially, tend to be poor at hint taking. So yes, you actually have to tell the guy -- rather than continue with your current approach: "I dumped you. You're smart. You'll figure it out eventually."
To be human is to procrastinate -- to put off till tomorrow (or the second Tuesday in never) what we could do today. Behavioral science research finds that we are biased toward the RIGHT NOW, irrationally overvaluing a small payoff we can have right away over a substantially larger one down the road. We're especially quick to put off anything that involves duty (and its conjoined twin, discomfort). This is irrational because deferring almost always costs far more -- like if we delay going to the doctor until we have not only a tumor but one with 3,651 Facebook friends.
Likewise, instead of cleverly escaping the stress of breaking up, you've built stressing about it into your daily routine: Coffee...ignore uncomfortable text...feed the cat...duck his call. It seems that ending the daily feel-bads should be motivation enough for you to clue the guy in. The problem is, the human motivational system tends to be in-activated by "avoidance goals" -- negative outcomes we're trying to avoid, such as avoiding feeling guilty for stringing a guy along. (It doesn't help that the "reward" here -- shifting from feeling guilty to feeling relieved -- is abstract and intangible.) What we find most motivating are "approach goals," positive outcomes we strive toward. To recast breaking up in that way, offer yourself an immediate and tangible reward, like treating yourself to a big sloppy dessert right after you do the deed.
Telling him in a timely way is something you do not just for him but for you, because what you do becomes who you are: Murder and you're a murderer. Garden and you're a gardener. Keep a guy on the hook and...well, okay, that one goes a little off track. But doing the right thing, the kind thing, would take what, five uncomfortable minutes on the phone? The cumulative dread of doing it probably feels way worse than the actual doing. Plus, the momentary awfulness seems a small price to pay to become a different sort of person -- one who doesn't make a guy feel like the kid whose mom was supposed to pick him up after soccer but instead moved to Belize.
I saw your recent column about a hiking date, and I was wondering whether I'd seem cheap if I asked a woman on a hike for the first date. A buddy says it'd seem rude to a woman to not be wined and dined, and I'd come off as chintzy or poor. I'm neither, but hiking's fun, and I like the idea of not spending big on first dates (most of which are busts anyway).
--Mountain Man
On a first date, a woman should be getting to know you, not getting to know how much you can put on your MasterCard before the waiter comes over with a big pair of scissors. Sure, some women will find you cheap for suggesting a hike -- mainly those who resent having to trudge up hills to procure a funding source with a penis. However, even women who are into exercising aren't always into doing it where they may get close enough to a bear to see that it could use one of those little nose hair trimmers. For these women, you might offer "activity date" alternatives, like bowling or attending a street fair or a gallery opening. These might also work better for first dates with any women you barely know -- alluring as it is to hear, "Hi, I'm a total stranger, and I'd like to take you off to a dark, wooded area where there's no cellphone reception." (Your shallow grave or mine?)