Eharmony success story

A friend of mine is getting married -- to a guy she met on eHarmony (http://www.eHarmony.com)! He was only the second guy she met from the site, but he was the one. After dating for seven months, they just got engaged. Yay! It's always reassuring to be reminded that these on-line dating sites do actually work sometimes. :) Congratulations, friend!

Grant proposals & marriage proposals

It was bound to happen: I just learned that a guy I dated last year (well, had one date with) got engaged. He posted it on his blog. My first reaction was, how can he possibly be engaged – I just had a date with him! But then I thought back and realized, oh, right, our first and only date was way back at the beginning of February 2007. Time sure flies.

I still feel guilty about how things ended with him. We had the one dinner date, and even though he was a Republican (!), it seemed to go well. He wanted to go out again, but February and March were insanely busy for me at work, and I just could never get it together. Then his birthday was at the beginning of March. Originally he’d planned to be away. But when his trip got cancelled the week before, I e-mailed him on Friday offering to go out with him on his birthday, which was the following Tuesday.

I didn’t hear back from him, things got even more crazed at work, so on Monday I e-mailed him, apologizing profusely and explaining I might have to cancel, depending on whether I got a grant proposal finished in time – I was right up against a deadline. He wrote back later that night and said to keep him posted. But I had to e-mail him the next day, apologizing profusely AGAIN, but there was no way I’d get out of the office anywhere close to on time. The grant proposal had to be finished. I offered to take him out the following week instead to make it up to him. He e-mailed me back that night, and he said he “wasn’t sure” about next week but would have a better idea on Thursday or Friday, and he signed it “keep in touch.” The tone of the e-mail was rather curt, but what did I expect, I let the guy down on his birthday! I felt really bad. :( I received an Easter E-Card from him a month later and I wrote him back, but that was the last I heard from him directly.

But it all worked out for him, because apparently he met the woman of his dreams. I clicked on his blog today and read that he just proposed and she said yes! I met him through Match.com (http://www.match.com/), so I wonder if he met his fiancée there, too? Well, if you’re reading this, Engaged Man, congratulations and best wishes! Your success gives hope to us all. :)

The Lone Wolf

Had an interesting phone conversation with Mr. No Touchy-Feely a few days ago. He said he might participate in a group bike ride the next day, “but maybe not – I’ve been on the e-mail list for this bike group for years now, and I’ve never done one group bike ride.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I usually just look at where they’re going and then go on my own at another time,” he said. “But my resolution this year was to be more social, so maybe I’ll go with them this time.”

As soon as he said that, the fact that he still hasn’t made a move with me suddenly made a lot more sense. He’s a loner by nature. He probably hasn’t dated a whole lot. Joining eHarmony was probably part of his be-more-social resolution.

But, do I want to be with someone who is a natural loner? Is he the kind of person who, when a conflict arises, shuts down and flees for a bike ride alone, rather than stays and talks it out? I don’t know.

I do still like him, though.

There was a story in the “Vows” column of yesterday’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/fashion/weddings/15vows.html) about a couple who just got married, and it had taken the now-husband EIGHT MONTHS to kiss his now-wife when they first started going out (“Ms. Lucas wanted the relationship to develop; Mr. Kass said he needed ‘time.’”). Eight months! But he finally kissed her, so then they were definitely dating. But after four years, she had to give him a two-month ultimatum before he would finally propose. They were 31 when they met, and 37 when they finally got married. I don’t know if I could have been that patient. If someone needs an ultimatum to get them to propose, I would start to wonder if they were really in love.

More on "Settling" vs. Compromising

I’ve been thinking some more about Lori Gottlieb’s Atlantic Monthly article “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough" (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/single-marry), which I first blogged about it in my April 18th post. It made me think about Emily Giffin’s novel “Baby Proof,” which I read last year. In the book, one of the narrator’s sisters had, ten years earlier, dated a really nice, sweet guy who truly loved her, but she broke up with him because he wasn’t exciting enough. She said she couldn’t stay with anyone who didn’t make her pulse race on a regular basis. She ended up marrying a guy who did that, all right – but he ended up being equally passionate about other women and had one affair after another. I think that’s the sort of behavior Gottleib is trying to warn against. Don’t “settle” for the first guy who comes along, but do recognize that real love isn’t necessarily about nonstop passion and excitement. Real love is also about who will speak in soothing tones and hold your hair back when you’re throwing up from the flu. As Gottlieb writes,

“In my formative years, romance was John Cusack and Ione Skye in 'Say Anything.' But when I think about marriage nowadays, my role models are the television characters Will and Grace, who, though Will was gay and his relationship with Grace was platonic, were one of the most romantic couples I can think of. What I long for in a marriage is that sense of having a partner in crime. Someone who knows your day-to-day trivia. Someone who both calls you on your bullshit and puts up with your quirks…As your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called ‘deal breakers’ change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they’d make great dads. Or you walk into a room and start talking to this person who is 5'4" and has an unfortunate nose, but he ‘gets’ you.”

See, to me, those examples are not examples of settling. They are examples of discovering that what you want in a partner grows and changes as you grow and change, as well it should, and being willing to compromise on things (I mean, height? c’mon!) that aren’t that important. Looking for someone who would be good to have a one-night stand with is much different than looking for someone who would be good to partner with for life – but don’t most people in their 30s and 40s realize that?

Gottlieb also feels that it’s better to be with SOMEONE, even if he doesn’t live up to your romantic ideal, than be alone (because, as she would say, no one can be your perfect romantic ideal anyway). That reminds me of when my sister and brother-in-law went on their honeymoon. They hadn’t traveled much together before, and they had a terrific time touring London and seeing the sights – so much so that at one point my sister exclaimed, “Wow! Traveling with you is so much better than traveling by myself!” At which point, my brother-in-law quipped, “Great – I’m better than nobody!” ;)

I also read Sara Lipka's interview with Gottlieb on the Atlantic Monthly web site (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200802u/gottlieb-interview). Interestingly, Gottlieb broke up with a serious boyfriend right before starting to go through the artifical insemination process to have a child on her own. In response to the question, "Feeling as you do now, what would you have done differently?" Gottlieb says,

"I would have considered dating guys I never gave a chance. Platonic guy-friends, or guys I met who asked me out but I turned them down, or guys I went on just one date with because I didn’t feel any chemistry or whatever I thought I was supposed to feel. I was looking for a spark when I should have been looking for a solid life partner. And some of those guys would have been really excellent life partners. They’re all married now, of course, because the guys always get married. Maybe it would have been nice to wake up with one of those guys every day and raise a family together. One in particular was much closer to the kind of person I’d want to marry than anybody I’d likely end up meeting now. "

I wonder if she's talking about the guy she broke up with to have a baby on her own?

By the way, Gottlieb got both a lucrative book deal AND a movie deal (!) out of this one article. If anyone out there is moved to offer The Dating Guru a book deal or a movie deal based on this blog, don't be shy -- I'd happily "settle" for either one. (I won't even insist that a gorgeous actress be cast as me!)

What Happened to Ms. Enabler

Just a quick postscript to my March 13th post, in case you’re wondering what ever happened to Ms. Enabler after Mr. Invisible died. Four months after his death, she attended a fellow teacher’s Halloween party, where one of the high school teachers asked her out. They ended up getting engaged only six months later and marrying that summer – barely 12 months after Mr. Invisible died (!). This after Ms. Enabler had always said she didn’t care about whether she and Mr. Invisible ever got married or not, because “it’s just a piece of paper.” Pretty weird, huh? J told me privately that she doubted the marriage would last, since it was so soon after Mr. Invisible’s death. I lost touch with Ms. Enabler, but last I heard she and her husband had moved to a bigger city, though still in Texas. I don’t know for sure if they’re still married, but when I Google’d her a couple years ago, she was still using her married name.

Happy Leap Day!

Today is February 29th, a.k.a. Leap Day! Several celebrities have had February 29th birthdays: musician Jimmy Dorsey, actress Dinah Shore, self-help star Tony Robbins, rapper Ja Rule, and, disturbingly, Aileen Wuornos, the prostitute-turned-serial-killer played by Charlize Theron in the movie “Monster.”

But what does Leap Day mean for singles? Plenty! Tradition has it that women can do the marriage-proposing on Leap Day or, in some places, anytime during a Leap Year. Although some say this tradition originated with St. Patrick or with Brigid of Kildare in fifth century Ireland, there’s no evidence of it existing prior to the nineteenth century. Some people conflate this “Ladies’ Privilege” of Leap Day with Sadie Hawkins Day -- but Sadie Hawkins Day was invented by Al Capp in his Li’l Abner comic strip back in November 1937, and for the next 40 years it was celebrated in November.

There’s also a story, according to Wikipedia, that “a 1288 law by Queen Margaret of Scotland (then age five and living in Norway), required that fines be levied if a marriage proposal was refused by the man; compensation ranged from a kiss to £1 to a silk gown, in order to soften the blow.” I appreciate that the law probably made men take marriage proposals from women seriously, but somehow I don’t think I’d want a guy to marry me just to avoid a fine....

Happy Leap Day, everyone!